2024 Primetime Emmy Awards: ‘Shōgun’ is the top nominee

July 16, 2024

Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai in “Shōgun” (Photo by Katie Yu/FX)

The following is a press release from the Television Academy:

Nominations for the 76th Emmy® Awards were announced from the historic El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, recognizing remarkable programs, extraordinary performances and impactful storytelling across multiple platforms. The live ceremony was hosted by Emmy winners Tony Hale and Sheryl Lee Ralph along with Television Academy Chair Cris Abrego.

The nearly 22,000 voting members of the Academy nominated an abundance of inspiring talent and a robust selection of diverse program offerings. In a year marked by significant challenges and changes in the Television landscape, the nominations recognize the excellent work of performers, producers, writers, directors, craftspeople, and professionals above and below the line on television programs from the 2023 – 2024 eligibility year.

“Television delivers stories that connect us, uplift us, challenge us, and always entertain us. Today, I am honored to celebrate the outstanding work of our extraordinarily talented and hardworking creative community,” said Television Academy Chair Cris Abrego. “This morning’s Emmy nominations are a testament to their contributions and highlight the incredible programming that has risen to the top of an exceptional year in TV.”

“The Bear” set a new record for nominations in a single year in the Comedy category with 23 (previously held by “30 Rock” with 22 nominations in 2009), and “Shōgun” lead this year’s Drama category with 25 nominations.

The 36 first-time performer nominees across all performer categories this year are Eric André (“The Eric Andre Show”), Tadanobu Asano (“Shōgun”), Jonathan Bailey (“Fellow Travelers”), Nicole Beharie (The Morning Show), Matt Berry (“What We Do in the Shadows”), Lionel Boyce (The Bear), Néstor Carbonell (“Shōgun”), Liza Colón-Zayas (“The Bear”), Dakota Fanning (“Ripley”), Richard Gadd (performance, producer and writing nominations for “Baby Reindeer”), Lily Gladstone (“Under the Bridge”), Tom Goodman-Hill (“Baby Reindeer”), Ryan Gosling (“Saturday Night Live”), Jessica Gunning (“Baby Reindeer”), John Hawkes (“”True Detective: Night Country), Takehiro Hira (“Shōgun”), Tom Hollander (“Feud: Capote vs. The Swans”), Aja Naomi King (“Lessons in Chemistry”), Greta Lee (“The Morning Show”), Tracy Letts (“Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty”), Jack Lowden (“Slow Horses”), Lesley Manville (“The Crown”), Nava Mau (“Baby Reindeer”), Lamorne Morris (“Fargo”), Karen Pittman (“The Morning Show”), Parker Posey (“Mr. & Mrs. Smith”), Lewis Pullman (“Lessons in Chemistry”), Da’Vine Joy Randolph (“Only Murders in the Building”), Kali Reis (“True Detective: Night Country”), Paul Rudd (performance for “Only Murders in the Building” and narrator for “Secrets of the Octopus”), Hiroyuki Sanada (“Shōgun”), Anna Sawai (“Shōgun”), Mena Suvari (“RZR”), Naomi Watts (“Feud: Capote vs. The Swans”), Dominic West (“The Crown”) and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (“Reservation Dogs”).

In addition to Gadd and Rudd, performers with multiple nominations this year include Quinta Brunson (performance and writing for “Abbott Elementary”), Jodie Foster (performance and producer for “True Detective: Night Country”), Donald Glover (performance and writing for “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”), Jon Hamm (performance for “Fargo” and “The Morning Show”), Brie Larson (performance and producer for “Lessons in Chemistry”), Jonathan Pryce (performance for “The Crown” and “Slow Horses”), Maya Rudolph (performance for “Loot,” performance and music & lyrics for “Saturday Night Live,” character voice-over for “Big Mouth”), Andrew Scott (performance and producer for “Ripley”) and Kristen Wiig (performance for “Palm Royale” and “Saturday Night Live”).

Emmy Nominations presenter Ralph was surprised by Abrego at the conclusion of the announcement ceremony with her third nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for Abbott Elementary.

The nominations rosters may be revised in cases where names or titles are incorrect or appeals for changes—including the addition or removal of names—are approved by the Television Academy’s Emmy Awards Committee. Producer eligibility is based primarily on title; producer nominees in certain program categories will be announced early August and may increase the number of multiple nominees. Final-round online voting begins August 15, 2024.

The complete list of Emmy nominations, as compiled by the independent accounting firm of Ernst & Young LLP, is attached along with key categories. This and other Academy news and updates are available at Emmys.com.

As previously announced, Emmy Award winners Jesse Collins and Dionne Harmon along with Emmy-nominated Jeannae Rouzan-Clay of Jesse Collins Entertainment are set to return as executive producers of the 76th Emmy Awards. This marks their second consecutive year as producers of television’s biggest night.

The 76th Emmy Awards will broadcast live on ABC on Sunday, September 15, (8:00-11:00 PM EDT/5:00-8:00 PM PDT) from the Peacock Theater at L.A. LIVE and stream the next day on Hulu. The 76th Creative Arts Emmy Awards take place at the Peacock Theater over two consecutive nights on Saturday, September 7, and Sunday, September 8, with an edited presentation to air on Saturday, September 14, at 8:00 PM EDT/PDT on FXX.

ABOUT THE TELEVISION ACADEMY
The Television Academy strives to shape and advance the dynamic television landscape; cultivate a diverse, inclusive and accessible professional community; and advocate for the television industry while capturing the spirit of a new generation of content creators and industry professionals. Through innovative programs, publications and events, the Academy and its Foundation foster and empower storytellers. The Academy also celebrates those who excel in the industry recognizing their achievements through awards and accolades, including the renowned Emmy® Award. Membership in the Academy is open to working professionals in the television industry. For more information, please visit
TelevisionAcademy.com.

Review: ‘The Devil’s Bath,’ starring Anja Plaschg, Maria Hofstätter and David Scheid

July 10, 2024

by Carla Hay

Anja Plaschg and David Scheid in “The Devil’s Bath” (Photo courtesy of Shudder)

“The Devil’s Bath”

Directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz

German with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Austria, in 1750, the horror film “The Devil’s Bath” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A young newlywed becomes mentally ill in a conservative and judgmental religious community.  

Culture Audience: “The Devil’s Bath” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s directors and horror films with religious themes.

Anja Plaschg in “The Devil’s Bath” (Photo courtesy of Shudder)

“The Devil’s Bath” is not easy to watch for people who expect horror movies to have quick pacing and obvious jump scares. This “slow burn” film, set in 1750 Austria, shows the terror of untreated mental illness in a strict religious community. It’s worth watching until the very end to understand the true impact of the story.

Written and directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, “The Devil’s Bath” is based on historical research by Kathy Stuart. The movie had its world premiere at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival and its U.S. premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Festival. “The Devil’s Bath” swept the 2024 Austrian Film Awards, winning seven prizes: Best Feature Film; Best Actress (for Anja Plaschg); Best Supporting Actress (for Maria Hofstätter); Best Film Editing; Best Production Design; Best Score; and Best Makeup.

The movie (which takes place in an unnamed Austrian village in 1750) begins with a terrifying scene of a woman named Ewa Schikin (played by Natalya Baranova) is walking through a wooded area with a baby (played by Frieda Seidl) until she reaches a cliff with a waterfall. Ewa then throws the baby over the waterfall. After committing this murder, she makes the sign of the cross on herself, calmly walks to a house, knocks on the door, and says to the unseen person opening the door: “I committed a crime.” Was is then shown beheaded, with her head on the ground. An unseen person cuts off one of her fingers.

And why did she commit this murder? That question is answered toward the end of the movie. In the meantime, a young couple named Agnes (played by Plaschg) and Wolf (played by David Scheid) are shown getting married. At the wedding reception, the guests play a game to behead a chicken while blindfolded.

Agnes and Wolf are living in a small shack-like house, near the house of Wolf’s mother Gänglin (played by Hofstätter), who has a close relationship with Wolf. Before Wolf and Agnes got married, the couple lived with Gänglin. Agnes liked living there and expresses disappointment to Wolf that the couple will now be living in this much smaller house. Wolf tells Agnes that he will soon inherit his mother’s farm, which is another way of saying he doesn’t expect Gänglin to live much longer.

This village community is very religious. Every time a clock chimes in the village, several of the residents make the sign of the cross. Women are expected to be wives and mothers. Young and healthy women are expected to out with any physical work that the men do.

Many of the villagers make their living by fishing for catfish. However, later in the movie, it’s shown that the village is experiencing a food shortage. Loaves and bread are rationed. This rationing leads to some tense moments where people have disputes about how much bread they deserve to get.

One day, Agnes is walking through the woods and looking for Wolf when she sees a drawing on a tree. The drawing depicts Ewa throwing a baby over a waterfall and later being beheaded while she was in prison. She also sees that Ewa’s beheaded body on display with Ewa’s head nearby in a small cage. It’s later revealed that Agnes now has the finger of Ewa that was taken from Ewa’s body.

Another death soon happens in the village: A young man named Lenz (played by Lorenz Tröbinger) has committed suicide by hanging. At Lenz’s funeral, a priest gives a sermon has this to say about Lenz’s suicide: “What he did is worse than murder.”

Agnes wants to become a mother but gets frustrated that she hasn’t gotten pregnant. She falls into a deep depression where she refuses to get out of bed. Agnes also overhears her mother-in-law Gänglin tells Wolf: “You should’ve married a local girl … someone who’s a better worker and can get pregnant.”

The movie’s title refers to 18th century Austrian vernacular that described depression as being trapped in “the devil’s bath.” Because psychology wasn’t developed as a science until the late 1870s, religion in Agnes’ 1750s community is used as an explanation for mental illness. In many of today’s communities, religion instead of science is still used as a “cure” or treatment for mental illness and other psychological issues.

“The Devil’s Bath” shows Agnes’ further mental deterioration as she continues to isolate herself. Some extreme things happen that are meant to be shocking but also demonstrate what can happen when desperate people do certain things when they feel trapped and take what they think is the best option. Religious oppression is inescapable in this story.

There are some haunting images scattered throughout the movie. For example, there’s a scene showing decapitated human arms floating in a barrel filled with water and catfish. Another is a scene where moths come out of Agnes’ mouth.

Some of the most squirm-worthy imagex are how the “treatments” that Agnes gets from Wolf in attempts to “cure” her of her depression. Leeches are put on Agnes to “let the melancholy out.” Wolf also uses a needle to thread a dangling string horizontally across the back of her neck, where Agnes tugs the string back and forth. It seems like a very crude and misguided way of treating nerve pinpoints, like a warped version of acupuncture.

“The Devil’s Bath” succeeds in its intention to depict a dark and claustrophobic experience of someone’s mental illness gradually getting worse and being stuck in a community that equates mental illness with demon possession. Religion is used with rigid harshness to punish those who are mentally ill.

As the troubled Agnes, Plaschg gives a complex performance that is both harrowing and heartbreaking. “The Devil’s Bath” deliberately takes its time to reveal certain deadly motives. The truth has nothing to do with devil possession and everything to do real-life religious fears that human beings place on each other.

Shudder released “The Devil’s Bath” in select U.S. cinemas on June 21, 2024. Shudder premiered the movie on June 28, 2024. UPDATE: “The Devil’s Bath” will be re-released in select U.S. cinemas on November 13, 2024.

Review: ‘TikTok Star Murders,’ starring Rachel Britt, Julia Stuntz, Kelsey Christensen, Cameron Jackson, Joni E. Johnston, Andrea Marks and Aleida Wahn

July 8, 2024

by Carla Hay

Rachel Britt in “TikTok Star Murders” (Photo courtesy of Peacock)

“TikTok Star Murders”

Culture Representation: The documentary film “TikTok Star Murders” features an Asian and white group of people discussing the case of former TikTok personality Ali Abulaban (who used the screen name JinnKid), who has been convicted of the 2021 murders of his wife Ana Abulaban and her friend Rayburn Barron.

Culture Clash: Ali Abulaban, an admitted cocaine addict, grew increasingly jealous, controlling and abusive of Ana, and he murdered her and Barron shortly after she separated from him and moved into another home.  

Culture Audience: “TikTok Star Murders” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries, but this documentary fails at telling a well-rounded and well-researched story.

Louis “Louie” Marinari in “TikTok Star Murders” (Photo courtesy of Peacock)

“TikTok Star Murders” has a tabloid-like focus on the most sensationalistic aspects of this notorious case and leaves out many important facts. This documentary mostly ignores Rayburn Barron, the other victim in this double homicide. Almost nothing is told about Barron in the documentary, except that he was a friend of Ana Abulaban, and they were both murdered in the same apartment in San Diego on October 21, 2021.

Ana’s estranged husband Ali Abulaban (who was born in 1992) confessed to the murders but claimed Ana (who was 28 when she died) provoked him into killing her and 29-year-old Barron. Ana and Barron were both murderd by gun violence in the apartment where Ana had moved after separating from Ali. Despite Ali’s claims that this was a manslaughter “crime of passion,” he was convicted in 2024 of two counts of first-degree murder. “TikTok Star Murders” was released before Ali received his prison sentence.

There is no director listed for this documentary, but George Plamondon is credited as the executive producer/showrunner of “TikTok Star Murders.” Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson is an executive producer through his production company G-Unit Films & Television. “TikTok Star Murders” is very formulaic in how it’s formatted, from the ominous music to the re-enactments that are shown in slow-motion to increase the drama. The documentary claims to be about putting the focus on the victims, but Ana is the only murder victim in this double homicide who gets extensive commentary in this movie. Barron is mentioned only as an afterthought.

“TikTok Star Murders” tells a tragic tale that is unfortunately common in situations where domestic abuse turns into murder. Ali Abulaban (who used the screen name JinnKid) was born in New York City, and he was a rising star in social media, mainly because of his comedy skits and celebrity impersonations. Ali was obsessed with the 1983 film “Scarface,” starring Al Pacino as cocaine kingpin Tony Montana, so Ali’s impressions were mostly of Tony Montana. TikTok was the social media platform where Ali was the most popular.

Like many social media personalities, Ali was also an aspiring actor who wanted to break into movies and television. He also had a troubled past. Ali joined the U.S. Air Force in 2013. He was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, where several U.S. military bases are located. Ana and her parents, who are originally from the Philippines, were also living in Okinawa because her father was in the military. This military location is how Ali and Ani met and began dating each other.

Ali’s military career was ruined in 2015, when he was dishonorably discharged for assaulting a friend of Ana’s. The “TikTok Star Murders” documentary should have given further details about this early warning sign of Ali’s violence, but this documentary has no interest in investigative journalism. The only “exclusives” this shoddily made documentary has to offer are some previously unreleased home videos and text messages of Ali being verbally abusive to Ana.

The documentary retells facts that are already known: After Ali was ousted in disgrace from the U.S. Air Force in 2015, he moved back home with his family in Bristow, Virginia. It was during this time that he started making social media videos that would go viral. He eventually was able to make enough money from social media for it to be a full-time job for him.

While Ali was in Bristow after his military discharge, Ana had moved back with her family to the Philippines when she found out that she was pregnant. Ali and Ana’s daughter Amira was born in the Philippines in 2016. The decision was made for Ana and Amira to move to the U.S. when they could get visas, which happened when Amira was still an infant. Ali and Ana got married and settled in Bristow. For many years, they presented a public image of being a happy couple in love.

Many of Ana’s female friends who grew up on the same Okinawa military base were now living in San Diego. After visiting them in San Diego, Ana fell in love with the city’s lifestyle and convinced Ali to move to San Diego, where they lived in an apartment building. According to people interviewed in the documentary, Ali agreed to this relocation mainly because San Diego’s proximity to Los Angeles would make it easier for him to get jobs in Hollywood movies and TV shows, compared to if he had stayed in Virginia. Ali never got hired for any work in the Hollywood entertainment industry. He was stuck doing social media videos.

This documentary gives very few details about Ali’s family. The only family member of Ali’s who is interviewed in this documentary is Louis “Louie” Mariani, who says he is Ali’s cousin. Mariani is vague about the family and will only say that Ali’s parents are Middle Eastern and conservative religious Muslims. Mariani describes Ali as a non-religious free spirit who didn’t follow a lot of expected traditions because Ali wanted to pursue a creative profession in the arts.

Mariani comments, “I really feel like Ali was meant to be a star.” Mariani also says the obvious about this murder tragedy: “I feel like this whole situation has turned my whole life upside down, as well as turned our whole family’s life upside down.” The problem is that Mariani doesn’t give any details about how the family reacted when they found out that Ali was abusing Ana. He also doesn’t offer any information to explain if Ali came from an abusive home or not, since many abusers have abusive childhoods.

The only clue that this documentary offers about Ali’s family is a video clip of Ana calling Ali’s mother during an argument when Ali was insulting Ana mercilessly in their San Diego apartment. Ali, who was obsessed with recording many things in his life, actually recorded this video. By then, the marriage had fallen apart, and Ana was telling Ali that she was going to leave him because he was abusive to her and she didn’t love him anymore.

In the video, Ana tells Ali’s mother that Ali is high on cocaine again. Ali’s mother can be heard on the phone saying that Ana should leave Ali. Ali’s mother also says that Ana and Amira can come live with her. Ali can be heard cursing and shouting that Ana is just trying to humiliate him. Ana eventually confided to friends that Ali was physically abusing her, but she often downplayed or hid how long this abuse had been going on.

Ali’s cocaine addiction is mentioned many times in the documentary, although the documentary never bothers to say or find out when Ali began abusing cocaine. However, Mariani and some of Ana’s friends mention that Ali became obvious about his cocaine abuse when he started to become a social media star. The documentary has no information about whether or not Ali or anyone else in his life tried to get him professional rehab/recovery treatment for his addiction.

According to the stories told in this documentary, Ali liked to have a big plastic bag of cocaine with him. He would take out the bag (even in public places where strangers could see him) and snort cocaine from it. On a few occasions (as seen in the documentary), Ali snorted cocaine on camera during his livestreams. Many people in his audience gave encouraging comments when he snorted cocaine on camera because it fit his Tony Montana wannabe persona.

One of this documentary’s biggest failings is that it has no information about Ana’s family. This huge void of information becomes even more noticeable as her friends talk about all the indications they saw that Ana was being abused. When did Ana’s family find out that Ali was abusing Ana? What did Ana’s family do to try to help Ana? The documentary never bothers to answer those questions.

Even if no one in Ana’s family wanted to be interviewed, information about what her family did or didn’t do to help her is what a responsible documentary would have included if it really wanted to tell the whole story of this domestic violence victim who was murdered. Instead, the only people speaking for Ana’s perspective are three of her friends: Rachel Britt, Julia Stuntz and someone identified only as Kayla, who says she knew Ana since they were teenagers in Okinawa.

Ana’s friends describe Ana as someone who blossomed from being an awkward and nerdy teenager into a stunningly beautiful woman who looked like she could be a model. Ana had a positive, kind and upbeat personality. She was a devoted and loving mother to Amira. After Ana moved to San Diego, her friends say that Ana got more into the physical fitness lifestyle.

However, in hindsight, Ana was very skilled at hiding a lot of her unhappiness and the physical abuse that she got from Ali. Her friends say that the biggest red flags that Ali was an abuser was how controlling, jealous and possessive he would be about Ana. Ali usually got very angry if Ana received more attention than he did, if she spent time with another man (even though she was a faithful wife, by all accounts), or if another man complimented Ana on her beauty. Ali often wrongfully accused Ana of cheating on him, even though Ali was the one in the marriage who eventually cheated, according to Ana’s friends.

As seen in videos shown in the documentary, toward the end of the marriage, Ali was openly calling Ana a “bitch” and a “whore” in his social media posts. He presented a narrative that Ana was an ungrateful immigrant who used him so that she could move to the United States and get resident alien status by marrying him. Ali’s misogynistic rants were “liked” by many people in his audience. And when Ana went public on TikTok that she was leaving her abusive marriage, Ali flew into a rage.

“TikTok Star Murders” only identifies people from Ali’s and Ana’s personal lives by their first names only, even though the full names of Britt, Stuntz and Mariani aren’t a secret because they testified in Ali’s trial and/or they’ve given other interviews to media outlets that reported their first and last names. Therefore, it seems unnecessary and fake for the documentary to try to make it look like they’re protecting these people’s privacy.

The only interviewee whose identity is completely hidden in the documentary is a young man using the alias Lucifer, who says he was Ali’s TikTok moderator. Lucifer is interviewed in the shadows to hide what his face looks like. His voice also sounds like it could have have been altered to protect his privacy. Lucifer says that he wants to be anonymous because he keeps his TikTok life separate from his real life. The only other person who speaks for Ali is a woman identified only as Rain, who has nothing insightful to say because she admits she only interacted with Ali as an “online friend” and never met him in person.

Also interviewed in the documentary are some journalists and people in law enforcement. Andrea Marks covered the case as a writer/reporter for Rolling Stone. Kelsey Christensen (a reporter for KSWB-TV, the Fox affiliate in San Diego) interviewed Ali in jail not long after he was arrested for the murders in 2021. Also interviewed in the documentary are former San Diego police officer Cameron Jackson; clinical/forensic psychologist and private investigator Dr. Joni E. Johnston, who was not involved in this case; and attorney Aleida Wahn, who does not represent Ali or anyone from the victims’ families and who did not work on this case.

Johnston mostly talks about domestic abuse and what to do in seeing warning signs and how to seek help. Ana’s friends also make impactful comments about not being bystanders to abuse. Britt says, “I want people not to be silent. Your truth is who you are … We need to be the change we want for the world.”

“TikTok Star Murders” competently serves as a cautionary tale about domestic abuse escalating into murder. The documentary also points out that what is presented as “truth” on social media can often be deliberately false or misleading of what’s happening in real life. None of this is surprising news, and this documentary just lazily regurgitates other people’s reporting on this case.

The documentary is incomplete and sloppy in too many areas, particularly when it comes to omitting a lot of relevant details. It’s mentioned in the documentary that media coverage of this case hardly ever mentions murder victim Barron, but the documentary does the same thing by ignoring Barron’s life story. Viewers will have a lot of questions about him that this documentary never answers.

How incomplete and sloppy in this documentary? “TikTok Star Murders” also doesn’t mention that Ana was married to someone else before she married Ali. Her first husband Shawn Torres was also in the U.S. military and knew Ali when they were stationed in Okinawa. Torres testified for the prosecution in Ali’s trial. That information isn’t in this documentary either. Ultimately, “TikTok Star Murders” doesn’t do anything to distinguish itself from the cheap, quickly made true crime documentaries that are churned out in a tacky manner and are the equivalent of ambulance chasers.

Peacock premiered “TikTok Star Murders” on June 25, 2024.

Review: ‘Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood,’ starring Mikael Wood, Brittany Spanos, Lucas Shaw, Richard Busch, Nola Ojomu, Jennifer Otter Bickerdike and Alex Goldschmidt

June 23, 2024

by Carla Hay

Taylor Swift (pictured at left) and Scooter Braun (pictured at right) in “Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood” (Photo courtesy of Max)

“Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood”

Directed by Kate Siney

Culture Representation: The two-part documentary “Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood” features a predominantly white group of people (with a few black people and Asians) discussing the feud that erupted in 2019 between superstar Taylor Swift and entertainment mogul Scooter Braun, after Braun bought the master recordings for Swift’s albums that she originally recorded for Big Machine Records.

Culture Clash: Swift accused Braun of being a business bully, while Braun said the business deal was legal and accused Swift of ordering her fans to harass him and his loved ones.

Culture Audience: “Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Swift or Braun and are interested in documentaries that give basic lessons on media manipulation and how the music industry works.

“Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood” doesn’t have any new or bombshell information but it’s an adequate look back at one of the biggest battles in Taylor Swift’s long history of battles against real or perceived enemies. It’s a documentary that does exactly what is expected when looking at both sides of this feud, without interviewing the people at the center of the feud. There’s competent explanation of business deals, but better film editing was needed for some footage.

Directed by Kate Siney, “Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood” is divided into two episodes. The first episode is titled “Taylor’s Side.” The second episode is titled “Scooter’s Side.” There’s the usual mix of interviews done exclusively for the documentary and archival clips from other sources. The interviewees featured in “Taylor’s Side” are journalists, entertainment attorneys and Swift fans. The interviewees featured in “Taylor’s Side” are only journalists and entertainment attorneys. Apparently, the documentary’s filmmakers couldn’t get interviews with anyone claiming to be fans or colleagues of Braun.

The documentary reiterates basic facts of the feud: In 2019, Swift went public about a behind-the-scenes feud that she was having with Braun, who at the time was mostly known as a music manager whose clients included Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande and Kanye West. Scott Borchetta, the founder of Big Machine Records, is credited with discovering Swift. In June 2019, Big Machine (which released Swift’s first six studio albums) sold the company to Braun for an estimated $300 million.

The sale of Big Machine to Braun meant that Braun owned the rights to the original master recordings of Swift’s first six albums that she recorded while she was signed to Big Machine. Swift still retained the song publishing rights (the copyrights to her music and lyrics) for songs that she had written while signed to Big Machine. As mentioned in the documentary, it’s standard for a record company to own the master recordings of an artist who was signed to the record company at the time the recordings were made. Very few artists signed to major labels ever get full ownership of their master recordings.

Braun owning Swift’s master recordings for her Big Machine albums was particularly hurtful to her because of Swift’s on-again/off-again feud with rapper West. The Swift/West feud began in 2009, when West notoriously interrupted her acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards, when Swift won in the category for Best Female Video for “You Belong With Me.” In his on-stage outburst, West said that Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” which lost in the category, was “one of the best videos of all time.” West later made several public apologies for being rude to Swift in this incident.

The Swift/West feud reignited in 2016, when West’s song “Famous” was released and had a lyrics about Swift that said: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / I made that bitch famous.” Swift publicly expressed outrage and disgust at these lyrics. But there was backlash against Swift after Kim Kardashian (West’s wife at the time) released a secretly recorded video showing West and Swift having a phone conversation where Swift approved of West’s intention to say in the song that he wanted to have sex with Swift. In the video, West never told Swift that he was going to use the words “I made that bitch famous.”

Still, the damage was done. As West’s manager at the time, Braun naturally sided with West, although Braun never specifically said derogatory things about Swift in public. All of this is necessary background information to explain why Swift found it especially painful that her master recordings were now being owned by the person she considered to be one of her biggest enemies.

In interviews and other public statements, Swift described being blindsided and not knowing about the sale of Big Machine until she saw a report online. As pointed out in the documentary, what Swift did not include in her public griping about the deal was that her father had a 3% stake in Big Machine and made about $9 million to $15 million from the sale. Under those circumstances, it’s hard to believe that she didn’t know in advance that Big Machine was going to be sold. Swift also claimed that she was never given a chance to buy her master recordings. She called Borchetta and Braun “bullies” and described her battle in feminist terms, as if she were a victim of toxic masculinity.

The documentary includes the rebuttals and denials from Borchetta and Braun, who publicly released documents that showed that not only did Swift and her attorneys get offered a chance to own her master recordings from Big Machine, but she also turned down the offer because Big Machine wanted her to re-sign with the company in order for Swift to get the master recordings. Instead, Swift walked away from the offer and signed with Republic Records. Big Machine board member Erik Logan also made a public statement saying that Swift was lying about the circumstances of the deal. Swift pivoted to announcing that she would re-record and re-release all of her albums that were originally released by Big Machine.

As part of Swift’s PR campaign to get people to side with her, in one of her social media statements, she told her army of fans to tell Borchetta and Braun what they think about this business deal. This ugly saga played out for more than a year, even after Braun sold Big Machine to Shamrock Capital (a private equity firm owned by Disney) in November 2020. Braun eventually went public about Braun and his family members getting death threats and asked Swift to stop using fans to weaponize this business dispute. Swift ignored this plea.

“Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood” includes background biographical information about Swift and Braun. Raised in Pennsylvania, Swift came from an upper-middle-class family who fully supported her dream to become a famous singer. She is admired for standing up for herself and for being excellent at marketing herself. Raised in Connecticut, Braun came from a middle-class family where his grandparents were Holocaust survivors and he developed a strong sense of Jewish pride, family bonding and standing up for oppressed people. Braun started in the music business as a party promoter and was a marketing executive for So So Def Records before becoming a music manager, whose first major client was Bieber. Swift and Braun are described as very ambitious with intentions to be moguls.

The episode focusing on Swift includes gushing commentary from Swift superfans Alex Goldschmidt and Zack Hourihane. Also complimenting Swift is her former personal assistant Heather Wirth, who went on tour with Swift in 2015. The documentary paints a portrait of Swift being down-to-earth and kind to her fans and people she lets be close to her, but she also holds grudges, especially when it comes to people she sees as threats to her career. Braun is described as someone who wanted to be in the limelight as much as his artist clients. He has charitable side to him and a ruthless side to him, according to commentary in the documentary.

Journalists who weigh in with their thoughts and observations in both episodes are Mikael Wood of The Los Angeles Times, Brittany Spanos of Rolling Stone, Lucas Shaw of Bloomberg, Anna Silman of Business Insider, Nola Ojomu of the Daily Mail, Zing Tsjeng of Vice.com and freelancers Alex Bhattacharji and Rachel Brodsky. Brian Mansfield, a Nashville journalist who is described as a “friend” of Swift’s, does nothing but praise her in the episode focusing on Swift. On the other end of the spectrum, Shaw is the most critical of Swift and comments: “I don’t think she’s been fully honest about why she feels so strongly about Scooter Braun.”

There is also commentary from a few academics: University of Exeter cultural theorist Amelia Morris is firmly on Swift’s side and is quick to label any criticism of Swift as misogynistic. Morris goes a little overboard in defending Swift because Morris acts as if Swift is the only major artist who lost the rights to their music in business deals they later regretted. There are numerous examples of other superstar artists who don’t own legal rights to their biggest hit recordings, but the documentary ignores these examples. The Beatles losing their song publishing rights is only mentioned briefly in an archival MSNBC interview of Braun defending himself against Swift’s accusations of unfair business practices.

Dr. Jennifer Otter Bickerdike—an academic and music historian who is in the episode focused on Braun—is critical of Swift and points out several seeming hypocrisies and misleading or dishonest statements from Swift—not just in the feud with Braun but in other instances in Swift’s career. Otter Bickerdike comments that Swift likes to project an image of being a feminist but often acts like a “mean girl” to other women who publicly disagree with her. Some of the interviewees also point out that Swift could be more responsible in telling her fans not to maliciously attack or threaten people online who might be in public spats with Swift.

The issue of Swift writing songs about things going on in her personal life gets both praise and criticism. Her dating history (and list of her famous ex-boyfriends) get the expected scrutiny in the documentary. Supporters of Swift say that she’s the victim of a double standard because male artists don’t get as much criticism for writing about their personal lives. Critics of Swift say that she profits from writing songs about her personal life and therefore she shouldn’t be surprised when this type of confessional songwriting invites more attention to her personal life.

There’s also mention of Swift’s 2014 “Bad Blood” music video (in which Swift has an all-female, gun-toting posse), which is widely believed to be about Swift’s then-feud with rival singer Katy Perry. Otter Bickerdike and a few others say the implied violence in the “Bad Blood” video is in poor taste and goes against Swift’s carefully curated image as a peace-loving person who doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Some people in the documentary also say that Swift often likes to play the victim in her narratives about her enemies without taking responsibility for how she attacks people too.

The legal experts interviewed in the documentary include entertainment attorneys Richard Busch, Marina Bogorad and Howard King and legal expert/attorney Neama Rahmani. Busch has the most factual information to share about how contracts typically work in the music industry. Bogorad, who says repeatedly that Braun’s Big Machine deal was completely legal, lowers her credibility when she keeps describing record companies as “studios.” Someone needs to tell Bogorad that she’s talking about the music industry, not the movie industry.

Some of the same archival footage is unneccessarily repeated in both episodes. It’s as if the documentary filmmakers don’t trust that viewers will remember what was already shown. Or it could just be lazy editing. The documentary also would have benefited from having at least one interview with someone who worked for Braun. The movie fails to mention that West and Braun parted ways in 2018, after two-and-a-half years of Braun being West’s manager.

Also omitted from the documentary is the fact Braun eventually lost most of his biggest clients as a manager. However, an epilogue mentions that in 2021, Braun sold his Ithaca Holdings company to the South Korean music company HYBE, which is best known for representing BTS, the biggest pop group from South Korea. Braun became CEO of HYBE and got a reported $1 billion in the sale of Ithaca. Just four days before “Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood” was released, Braun publicly announced that he was officially retiring as a music manager to focus on his work at HYBE and other ventures.

In response to this documentary, Swift released a statement saying that that she’s put her feud with Braun behind her. People might continue to debate over who was the real winner in the Swift/Braun feud. Considering that after the feud, Swift also became a billionaire, her re-recorded albums have been even bigger sellers than when they were originally released, and her 2023-2024 Eras tour is one of the highest-grossing tours of all time, it seems as if billionaires Swift and Braun have anyone to complain about now, it shouldn’t be each other.

Max premiered “Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood” on June 21, 2024. The documentary premiered on Discovery+ in the United Kingdom.

2024 Tony Awards: ‘Stereophonic’ is the top winner

June 16, 2024

by Carla Hay

Team members from “Stereophonic” at the 77th Annual Tony Awards at David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City on June 16 , 2024.(Photo by Mary Kouw/CBS)

With five awards, including Best Play, “Stereophonic” (about a fictional rock band in the 1970s) was the top winner at the 77th annual Tony Awards, which were presented on June 16, 2024, at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. Ariana DeBose hosted the Tony Awards for the third consecutive year. The ceremony was telecast in the U.S. on CBS and livestreamed on Paramount+ With Showtime.

According to a Tony Awards press release: “The nominees were selected by an independent committee of 44 theatre professionals appointed by the Tony Awards Administration Committee. The 2024 Tony Awards are presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing.”

“The Outsiders” (based on S.E. Hinton’s 1967 novel about feuding young gangs) won four Tony Awards, including Best Musical. “Merrily We Roll Along” (about a close friendship between two men and a woman) also won four Tonys, including Best Revival of a Musical.

“Hell’s Kitchen” (a musical with songs by Alicia Keys and based on her youth in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood) and “Stereophonic” had the most nominations (13) going into the ceremony. “Hell’s Kitchen” won two Tony Awards: Maleah Joi Moon got the prize for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical, while Kecia Lewis was awarded Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical.

Musical performances included those from the casts of “Hell’s Kitchen” (featuring a surprise appearance by Keys and Jay-Z, who performed their hit “Empire State of Mind” at the end of a medley); “The Who’s Tommy”; “Merrily We Roll Along”; “Water for Elephants”;
“Illinoise”; “Stereophonic”; “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club”; “Suffs”; and “The Outsiders.”

Nicole Scherzinger performed “What I Did for Love” for the In Memoriam segment. Brian Stokes Mitchell, Bebe Neuwirth, Audra McDonald and Tony Awards host DeBose were also a special tribute to Chita Rivera, who died at age 91 on January 30, 2024.

The Tony Awards also had prizes in non-competitive categories, where the recipients were announced weeks in advance of the show. These awards were given during the non-televised portion of the ceremony. The Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre went to Jack O’Brien and George C. Wolfe. Special Tony Awards were given to Abe Jacob, Alex Edelman and Nikiya Mathis. The recipients for the Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre were Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, Dramatists Guild Foundation, Judith O. Rubin, the Samuel J. Friedman Health Center for the Performing Arts, Wendall K. Harrington and the Wilma Theater.

Presenters at the ceremony were Taraji P. Henson, Danai Gurira, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Pete Townshend, Taylor Tomlinson, Wendell Pierce, Ashley Park, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Patrick Wilson, Anthony Ramos, Ben Platt, Julianne Hough, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Andrew Rannells, Josh Gad, Jim Parsons, Tamara Tunie, Nate Burleson, Solomon Thomas, Jeffrey Wright, Hillary Clinton, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Hudson, Sean Hayes, Brooke Shields, Nick Jonas, Adrienne Warren, Cynthia Erivo and Idina Menzel.

Here is the complete list of nominations and winners for the competitive categories at the 2024 Tony Awards:

* = winner

Best Play

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding

Author: Jocelyn Bioh
Producers: Manhattan Theatre Club, Lynne Meadow, Chris Jennings, Madison Wells Live, LaChanze, Taraji P. Henson

Mary Jane

Author: Amy Herzog
Producers: Manhattan Theatre Club, Lynne Meadow, Chris Jennings

Mother Play

Author: Paula Vogel
Producers: Second Stage Theater, Carole Rothman, Lisa Lawer Post, Salman and Vienn Al-Rashid, Courtney Lederer and Mark Thierfelder, Jerry and Roz Meyer, Alix L.L. Ritchie, Jayne Baron Sherman

Prayer for the French Republic

Author: Joshua Harmon
Producers: Manhattan Theatre Club, Lynne Meadow, Chris Jennings

Stereophonic*

Author: David Adjmi
Producers: Sue Wagner, John Johnson, Seaview, Sonia Friedman Productions, Linden Productions, Ashley Melone, Nick Mills, Jillian Robbins, Stella La Rue, Alex Levy & David Aron, Dori Berinstein, James Bolosh, Burnt Umber Productions, The Cohn Sisters, Cathy Dantchik, Alexander R. Donnelly, Emerald Drive, Federman Koenigsberg, Dann Fink, Ruth Hendel, Larry Hirschhorn, Jenen Rubin, John Gore Organization, Willette & Manny Klausner, LAMF Protozoa, Katrina McCann, Stephanie P. McClelland, No Guarantees, Marissa Palley & Daniel Aron, Anna Schafer, Soto Namoff Productions, Sean Walsh, Bruce & Peggy Wanta, Hillary Wyatt, deRoy Howard, Winkler & Smalberg, 42nd.club, Craig Balsam, Concord Theatricals, Creative Partners Productions, Jonathan Demar, Douglas Denoff, DJD Productions, Echo Lake Entertainment, Faliro House, FilmNation Entertainment, Roy Gabay, GFour Productions, Candy Kosow Gold, Wes Grantom, Rachel Bendit & Mark Bernstein, Playwrights Horizons, Adam Greenfield, Leslie Marcus, Carol Fishman

Best Musical

Hell’s Kitchen

Producers: AK Worldwide Media, Inc., Roc Nation, DML Productions, Mandy Hackett, The Sunshine Group, Julie Yorn, The Jacobs Family, No Guarantees Productions, Front Row Productions, Sharpton Swindal Productions, Grove Entertainment, The Jaime Family, John Gore Organization, Terria Joseph, Andy Nahas, James L. Nederlander, Candy Spelling, Clara Wu Tsai, Universal Music Publishing, Independent Presenters Network, Della Pietra Spark Theatricals, Today Tix ARGU, Score 3 Partners, Aaron Lustbader, The Public Theater, Oskar Eustis, Patrick Willingham

Illinoise

Producers: Orin Wolf, Seaview, John Styles, David Binder, Emily Blavatnik, Susan Rose, ArKtype/Thomas O. Kriegsmann, David F. Schwartz, Patrick Catullo, Jon B. Platt, Diamond & Melvin, Nelson & Tao, Ruth Hendel, Elysabeth Kleinhans, Ted & Mary Jo Shen, Putnam & Thau, Chase & F.K.R., GJJJM Productions, Steve & Leticia Trauber, Tim Forbes, John Gore Organization, James L. Nederlander, Park Avenue Armory, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Nate Koch, TT Partners, Fisher Center at Bard

The Outsiders*

Producers: The Araca Group, American Zoetrope, Olympus Theatricals, Sue Gilad & Larry Rogowsky, Angelina Jolie, Betsy Dollinger, Jonathan & Michelle Clay, Cristina Marie Vivenzio, The Shubert Organization, LaChanze & Marylee Fairbanks, Debra Martin Chase, Sony Music Masterworks, Jamestown Revival Theater, Jennifer & Jonathan Allan Soros, Tanninger Entertainment, Tamlyn Brooke Shusterman, Geffen Playhouse/Howard Tenenbaum/Linda B. Rubin, Kevin Ryan, Mistry Theatrical Ventures, Galt & Irvin Productions, Tulsa Clarks, Paul & Margaret Liljenquist, Bob & Claire Patterson, Voltron Global Media, James L. Nederlander, Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures, The John Gore Organization, Independent Presenters Network, Stephen Lindsay & Brett Sirota, Jeffrey Finn, Playhouse Square, Sue Marks, Indelible InK, Lionheart Productions, The Broadway Investor’s Club, Starhawk Productions, Distant Rumble, Green Leaf Partnership, Michael & Elizabeth Venuti, Leslie Kavanaugh, Deborah & Dave Smith, Belle Productions, Chas & Jen Grossman, Miranda & Sahra Esmonde-White, Rungnapa & Jim Teague, Michael & Molly Schroeder, Casey & Chelsea Baugh, James L. Flautt, Jon L. Morris, Becky Winkler, William Moran Hickey, Jr. & William Horan Hickey, III, Oddly Specific Productions, Melissa Chamberlain & Michael McCartney, Rachel Weinstein, Wavelength Productions, Rob O’Neill & Shane Snow, Eric Stine, Cornice Productions, La Jolla Playhouse

Suffs

Producers: Jill Furman, Rachel Sussman, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Malala Yousafzai, Roy Furman, Allison Rubler, Cue to Cue Productions, Sandy Robertson, Kevin Ryan & Diane Scott Carter, Renee Ring & Paul Zofnass, Walport Productions, Judith Teel Davis & Joe Carroll, Tom D’Angora & Michael D’Angora, Louise Gund, Erica Lynn Schwartz, Stone Arch Theatricals/Mayer Productions, Xan Weiser/Matters of the Art, Nothing Ventured Productions, Christin Brecher, Chutzpah Productions, Morgan Steward, 16 Sunset Productions, The Broadway Investor’s Club, Ari Conte, Rose Maxi, Jennifer Friedland, David Carroll, Julie E. Cohen, The Garelicks, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Meena Harris, John Gore Organization, Laura Lonergan, Sally Martin, Peter May, The Mehiels, Nederlander Presentations, Brian Spector, Candy Spelling, Ed Walson, Zuckerberg/Segal, Needle Productions/Oddly Specific Productions, Alissandra Aronow/Wandi Productions, Craig Balsam/Jennifer Kroman, Burkhardt Jones Productions/Adam Cohen, Vibecke Dahle Dellapolla/Samantha Squeri, Funroe Productions/Kim Khoury, Sheri Clark Henriksen/Robert Tichio, Michelle Noh/Todd B. Rubin, Nick Padgett/Vasi Laurence, Seaview/Level Forward, Sixpoint Productions/Theatre Nerd Productions, Stanley S. Shuman/Marcie Orley, Soto Productions/The Cohn Sisters, Theatre Producers of Color, The Shubert Organization, The Public Theater, Oskar Eustis, Patrick Willingham

Water for Elephants

Producers: Peter Schneider, Jennifer Costello, Grove Entertainment, Frank Marshall, Isaac Robert Hurwitz, Seth A. Goldstein, Jane Bergère, Elizabeth Armstrong, Jason M. Brady, Carl & Jennifer Pasbjerg, Erica Rotstein & Crista Marie Jackson, Jana Bezdek & Jen Hoguet, John H. Tyson, Rich Entertainment Group, Jeremiah J. Harris, John Gore Organization, Jeff & Shannon Fallick, Patti & Mike Sullivan, Rodney Rigby, Larry Lelli, Bonnie Feld, Yonge Street Theatricals, Larry J. Kroll, The Shubert Organization, Nederlander Presentations, Nancy Gibbs, Jack Lane, Amy & PJ Lampi, Gwen Arment & Vasi Laurence, Mark Parkman Fairview Productions, Nothing Ventured Productions, Pam Hurst-Della Pietra & Stephen Pietra, Steven Spielberg & Kate Capshaw, The Glasshouse USA, Willette & Manny Klausner, John Paterakis, Hope Tschopik Schneider, Patty Baker, The Burcaws & Q’d Up Productions, Crescent Road, Cynthia Stroum, Sally Jacobs & Warren Baker, Tawnia Knox & Stuart Snyder, Madison Wells Live & Takonkiet Viravan, Terry H. Morgenthaler, Pamela Moschetti, Gabrielle Palitz & Fahs Productions, The Roehl Family & Chema Verduzco, Shapiro Jensen Schroeder, Tre Amici Productions, We Eat Dreams Productions, Rachel Weinstein, Maik Klokow, Margot Astrachan, Mehr-BB Entertainment

Best Revival of a Play

Appropriate*

Author: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Producers: Second Stage Theater, Carole Rothman, Lisa Lawer Post, Ambassador Theatre Group, Amanda Dubois, Annapurna Theatre, Bad Robot Live

An Enemy of the People

New Version: Amy Herzog
Producers: Seaview, Patrick Catullo, Plan B, Roth-Manella Productions, Eric & Marsi Gardiner, John Gore Organization, James L. Nederlander, Jon B. Platt, Atekwana Hutton, Bob Boyett, Chris & Ashlee Clarke, Cohen-Demar Productions, Andrew Diamond, GI6 Productions, Sony Music Masterworks, Triptyk Studios, Trunfio Ryan, Kate Cannova, DJL Productions

Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch

Producers: Jeffrey Richards, Hunter Arnold, Leslie Odom, Jr., Louise Gund, Bob Boyett, Curt Cronin, John Joseph, Willette and Manny Klausner, Brenda Boone, Salman Moudhy Al-Rashid, Creative Partners Productions, Irene Gandy, Kayla Greenspan, Mark and David Golub Productions, Kenny Leon, John Gore Organization, W3 Productions, Morwin Schmookler, Van Kaplan, Ken Greiner, Patrick W. Jones, Nicolette Robinson, National Black Theatre, Alan Alda, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson, Phylicia Rashad, Nnamdi Asomugha, Kerry Washington, The Shubert Organization

Best Revival of a Musical

Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club

Producers: ATG Productions, Underbelly, Gavin Kalin Productions, Hunter Arnold, Smith & Brant Theatricals, Wessex Grove, Julie Boardman, Tom Smedes, Peter Stern, Heather Shields, Caiola Productions, Kate Cannova, Adam Blanshay Productions & Nicolas Talar, Aleri Entertainment, Alex Levy Productions, Bunny Rabbit Productions, D’Angora Padgett Productions, Cyrene Esposito, David Treatman, Eddie Redmayne, The Array IV, Bad Robot Live, BlueJay Productions, Grace Street Creative Group, Iocane Productions, Jim Kierstead, Marco Santarelli, Tokyo Broadcasting System Television, George Waud, Yonge Street Theatricals, Federman Koenigsberg Productions/Sara Beth Zivitz, Tina Marie Casamento/Jennifer Johns, M. Kilburg Reedy/Tilman Kemmler, Greenspan Proffer/Kat Kit 4, Patty Baker/Matthew Christopher Pietras, Broadway Strategic Return Fund/Red Mountain Theatre Company, Evan Coles/The Cohn Sisters, Nolan Doran/Fakston Productions, Epic Theatricals/Jeffrey Grove, Jessica Goldman Foung/Andrew Paradis, William Frisbie Tilted Marguerite Steed Hoffman/Willette & Manny Klausner, Vasi Laurence/Stephen C Byrd, Brian & Dayna Lee/City Cowboy Productions, Maybe This Time/3D Productions, Nothing Ventured Productions/Theatre Producers of Color, Perfectly Marvelous/Catherine Schreiber & Co, Second Act/Freedom Theatricals, SSP Holdings/Todd & Bronwyn Bradley, Two Ladies/Nicole Eisenberg, Ilana Waldenberg/W Stage Productions, The Wolf Pack/Burnt Umber Productions, The Shubert Organization

Gutenberg! The Musical!

Producers: Ambassador Theatre Group, Patrick Catullo, Bad Robot Live, Seth A. Goldstein, Isaac Robert Hurwitz, Runyonland Productions, Elizabeth Armstrong, Timothy Bloom, Larry Lelli, Alchemation, The Council, Crescent Road, Wendy Federman, Marcia Goldberg, Hariton deRoy, LD Entertainment, James L. Nederlander, Al Nocciolino, Spencer Ross, Independent Presenters Network, Medley Houlihan/Score 3 Partners, Tryptyk Studios/Iris Smith, Jonathan Demar/Griffin Dohr, Andrew Diamond/Alexander Donnelly, Futurehome Productions/Koenigsberg Subhedar, Roy Gabay/Nicole Eisenberg, Jessica R. Jenen/Linda B. Rubin, Daniel Powell/Amplify Pictures, Jeremy Wein/Walport Productions, Kristin Caskey, Mike Isaacson, Bee Carrozzini

Merrily We Roll Along*

Producers: Sonia Friedman Productions, David Babani, Patrick Catullo, Jeff Romley, Debbie Bisno, Lang Entertainment Group, OHenry Productions, Winkler & Smalberg, Stephanie P. McClelland, Timothy Bloom, Creative Partners Productions, Eastern Standard Time, Fakston Productions, Marc David Levine, No Guarantees, Ted & Mary Jo Shen, Gilad Rogowsky, Playing Field, Key to the City Productions, Richard Batchelder/Trunfio Ryan, FineWomen Productions/Henry R. Muñoz, III, Thomas Swayne/Lamar Richardson, Abrams Corr/Mary Maggio, Osh Ashruf/Brenner-Ivey, Craig Balsam/PBL Productions, deRoy DiMauro Productions/Medley Houlihan, Andrew Diamond/Katler-Solomon Productions, Dodge Hall Productions/Carl Moellenberg, Friedman Simpson/Vernon Stuckelman, William Frisbie/J.J. Powell, Robert Greenblatt/Jonathan Littman, Cleveland O’Neal, III/Tom Tuft, Roth-Manella Productions/Seaview, New York Theatre Workshop

The Who’s Tommy

Producers: Stephen Gabriel, Ira Pittelman, Sue Gilad & Larry Rogowsky, Mary Maggio & Scott Abrams, Tom Tuft and Glenn Fuhrman, Batman Harris/Elliott Cornelious, Laura Matalon/Spencer Waller, Richard Winkler, Sheldon Stone, Firemused Productions/Stone Arch Theatricals, LeonoffFedermanWolosky Productions/Koenigsberg Batchelder, Roy Putrino/Narang Moran, Rich Martino, Aged in Wood/Lee Sachs, Paul and Margaret Liljenquist, R & R Productions, Marla McNally Phillips, Merrie Robin, O’Neill Snow, Work Light Productions, Nederlander Presentations, Independent Presenters Network, John Gore Organization, Palomino Performing Arts, Wavelength Productions, Robert Nederlander, Jr., Botwin Ignal Dawson, Jamie deRoy, Betsy Dollinger, Stacey Woolf Feinberg, Gold Weinstein, Tyce Green, Jenen Rubin, Jim Kierstead, Marco Santarelli, Nancy Timmers, Thomas B. McGrath, Olympus Theatricals, Goodman Theatre

Best Book of a Musical

Hell’s Kitchen

Kristoffer Diaz

The Notebook

Bekah Brunstetter

The Outsiders

Adam Rapp and Justin Levine

Suffs*

Shaina Taub

Water for Elephants

Rick Elice

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre

Days of Wine and Roses

Music & Lyrics: Adam Guettel

Here Lies Love

Music: David Byrne and Fatboy Slim
Lyrics: David Byrne

The Outsiders

Music & Lyrics: Jamestown Revival (Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance) and Justin Levine

Stereophonic

Music & Lyrics: Will Butler

Suffs*

Music & Lyrics: Shaina Taub

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play

William Jackson Harper, Uncle Vanya
Leslie Odom, Jr., Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch
Liev Schreiber, Doubt: A Parable
Jeremy Strong, An Enemy of the People*
Michael Stuhlbarg, Patriots

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play

Betsy Aidem, Prayer for the French Republic
Jessica Lange, Mother Play
Rachel McAdams, Mary Jane
Sarah Paulson, Appropriate*
Amy Ryan, Doubt: A Parable

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical

Brody Grant, The Outsiders
Jonathan Groff, Merrily We Roll Along*
Dorian Harewood, The Notebook
Brian d’Arcy James, Days of Wine and Roses
Eddie Redmayne, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical

Eden Espinosa, Lempicka
Maleah Joi Moon, Hell’s Kitchen*
Kelli O’Hara, Days of Wine and Roses
Maryann Plunkett, The Notebook
Gayle Rankin, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play

Will Brill, Stereophonic*
Eli Gelb, Stereophonic
Jim Parsons, Mother Play
Tom Pecinka, Stereophonic
Corey Stoll, Appropriate

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play

Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Doubt: A Parable
Juliana Canfield, Stereophonic
Celia Keenan-Bolger, Mother Play
Sarah Pidgeon, Stereophonic
Kara Young, Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch*

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical

Roger Bart, Back To The Future: The Musical
Joshua Boone, The Outsiders
Brandon Victor Dixon, Hell’s Kitchen
Sky Lakota-Lynch, The Outsiders
Daniel Radcliffe, Merrily We Roll Along*
Steven Skybell, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical

Shoshana Bean, Hell’s Kitchen
Amber Iman, Lempicka
Nikki M. James, Suffs
Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer, Monty Python’s Spamalot
Kecia Lewis, Hell’s Kitchen*
Lindsay Mendez, Merrily We Roll Along
Bebe Neuwirth, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club

Best Scenic Design of a Play

dots, Appropriate
dots, An Enemy of the People
Derek McLane, Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch
David Zinn, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding
David Zinn, Stereophonic*

Best Scenic Design of a Musical

AMP featuring Tatiana Kahvegian, The Outsiders
Robert Brill and Peter Nigrini, Hell’s Kitchen
Takeshi Kata, Water for Elephants
David Korins, Here Lies Love
Riccardo Hernández and Peter Nigrini, Lempicka
Tim Hatley and Finn Ross, Back To The Future: The Musical
Tom Scutt, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club*

Best Costume Design of a Play

Dede Ayite, Appropriate
Dede Ayite, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding*
Enver Chakartash, Stereophonic
Emilio Sosa, Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch
David Zinn, An Enemy of the People

Best Costume Design of a Musical

Dede Ayite, Hell’s Kitchen
Linda Cho, The Great Gatsby*
David Israel Reynoso, Water for Elephants
Tom Scutt, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
Paul Tazewell, Suffs

Best Lighting Design of a Play

Isabella Byrd, An Enemy of the People
Amith Chandrashaker, Prayer for the French Republic
Jiyoun Chang, Stereophonic
Jane Cox, Appropriate*
Natasha Katz, Grey House

Best Lighting Design of a Musical

Brandon Stirling Baker, Illinoise
Isabella Byrd, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
Natasha Katz, Hell’s Kitchen
Bradley King and David Bengali, Water for Elephants
Brian MacDevitt and Hana S. Kim, The Outsiders*

Best Sound Design of a Play

Justin Ellington and Stefania Bulbarella, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding
Leah Gelpe, Mary Jane
Tom Gibbons, Grey House
Bray Poor and Will Pickens, Appropriate
Ryan Rumery, Stereophonic*

Best Sound Design of a Musical

M.L. Dogg and Cody Spencer, Here Lies Love
Kai Harada, Merrily We Roll Along
Nick Lidster for Autograph, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
Gareth Owen, Hell’s Kitchen
Cody Spencer, The Outsiders*

Best Direction of a Play

Daniel Aukin, Stereophonic*
Anne Kauffman, Mary Jane
Kenny Leon, Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch
Lila Neugebauer, Appropriate
Whitney White, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding

Best Direction of a Musical

Maria Friedman, Merrily We Roll Along
Michael Greif, Hell’s Kitchen
Leigh Silverman, Suffs
Jessica Stone, Water for Elephants
Danya Taymor, The Outsiders*

Best Choreography

Annie-B Parson, Here Lies Love
Camille A. Brown, Hell’s Kitchen
Rick Kuperman and Jeff Kuperman, The Outsiders
Justin Peck, Illinoise*
Jesse Robb and Shana Carroll, Water for Elephants

Best Orchestrations

Timo Andres, Illinoise
Will Butler and Justin Craig, Stereophonic
Justin Levine, Matt Hinkley and Jamestown Revival (Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance), The Outsiders
Tom Kitt and Adam Blackstone, Hell’s Kitchen
Jonathan Tunick, Merrily We Roll Along*

Review: ‘Brats’ (2024), starring Andrew McCarthy, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Timothy Hutton and Jon Cryer

June 8, 2024

by Carla Hay

Emilio Estevez and Andrew McCarthy in “Brats” (Photo courtesy of ABC News Studios/Neon/Hulu)

“Brats” (2024)

Directed by Andrew McCarthy

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Brats” features a predominantly white group of people (with two people of color) from the entertainment industry and the media discussing the so-called Brat Pack group of actors and actresses who were teen idols and breakout successes in the early-to-mid-1980s.

Culture Clash: The Brat Pack struggled with this nickname that was given to them in a 1985 New York magazine article, as members felt this label damaged the perception that they wanted to be taken seriously as actors.

Culture Audience: “Brats” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, 1980s nostalgia and pop culture documentaries.

A 1985 photo of Rob Lowe and Andrew McCarthy in “Brats” (Photo courtesy of ABC News Studios/Neon/Hulu)

As a documentary, “Brats” offers an appealing blend of 1980s nostalgia, psychotherapy analysis and pop culture commentary in this forthright look at how members of the so-called Brat Pack were affected by this label that they did not want. “Brats” director Andrew McCarthy, who was a reluctant member of the Brat Pack, doesn’t make the movie a “where are they now” pity party of actors and actresses who became famous at a young age in the 1980s. Rather, “Brats” is about coming to terms with one’s past and learning some life lessons from experiences that can be seen with a different perspective that comes with wisdom and age. “Brats” had its world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Festival.

As explained in the documentary, the Brat Pack was a description coined by journalist David Blum, who wrote a June 1985 cover story article for New York magazine about young up-and-coming actors and actresses who frequently co-starred in the same movies. The article was originally supposed to be a small feature profile of Emilio Estevez (Martin Sheen’s eldest child), who had co-starred in movies such as 1983’s “The Outsiders” and 1985’s “The Breakfast Club,” which was his breakout hit. Blum hung out with actors Estevez, Rob Lowe and Judd Nelson at various Los Angeles-area restaurants, bars and nightclubs and reported what he saw and heard.

When the article was published, it was a somewhat unflattering exposé about the Brat Pack being spoiled, entitled partiers who were more interested in fame than in the art of acting. In pop culture, almost all of the stars of the 1985 drama movie “St. Elmo’s Fire” were lumped into the Brat Pack group: Estevez, Lowe, Nelson, McCarthy, Ally Sheedy and Demi Moore, although Blum’s “Brat Pack” article actually named only male actors as members of the Brat Pack. “St. Elmo’s Fire” co-star Mare Winningham, who was never considered part of the Brat Pack, was spared from most of the tabloid coverage that the others received.

“St. Elmo’s Fire” (directed and co-written by Joel Schumacher, who died at age 80 in the year 2020) is considered the ultimate Brat Pack movie because it’s the only movie to star the most members of the Brat Pack, and it was the movie that came out around the same time as the notorious New York magazine article. “Brats” has a very telling clip from an archival “Entertainment Tonight” interview that Moore did (while in her character’s wardrobe) on the set of “St. Elmo’s Fire.” In the archival interview, Moore says that the stars of “St. Elmo’s Fire” played characters with personality traits that were very similar to the cast members’ personality traits in real life.

In “St. Elmo’s Fire,” the headlining cast members all portrayed a close group of friends who have recently graduated from Georgetown University and who like to hang out at a bar called St. Elmo’s. Estevez’s law student character Kirby Keager, a St. Elmo’s waiter, is the earnest overachiever and unofficial leader of the group, just as Estevez was described in the New York magazine article as the unofficial leader of the Brat Pack. Moore’s banker character Julianna “Jules” Van Patten is a “wild child” with a drug habit. In real life (and in the “Brats” documentary), Moore says her cocaine addiction was so well-known when she filmed “St. Elmo’s Fire,” she was ordered to have a “sober companion” on the set with her at all times, to prevent Moore from getting out of control with her drug use.

Lowe’s musician character William “Billy” Hicks (who plays saxophone in a rock band) is a heartthrob hooking up with several women, even though Billy is married. Lowe had the same playboy reputation, except Lowe was a bachelor in real life during his Brat Pack years. Winningham’s wealthy do-gooder character Wendy Beamish is in love with Billy and becomes one of his sexual conquests. Winningham also had a “clean” image in real life.

Nelson’s aspiring politician character Alec Newberry is another “bad boy” cheater, although Alec is much more discreet than Billy about committing infidelity. Nelson, just like Lowe, also had a reputation as a ladies’ man who loved to party in real life. Sheedy’s aspiring architect character Leslie Hunter is nice but insecure. Leslie is engaged to Alec and is reluctant to marry him because she suspects that Alec is cheating on her.

McCarthy’s writer/journalist character Kevin Dolenz is Kirby’s intellectual roommate. Kevin is publicly cynical about love but privately is secretly in love with Leslie. In real life, as seen in “Brats,” McCarthy says he had a crush on Sheedy when they filmed “St. Elmo’s Fire.” When McCarthy confesses this crush to Sheedy during the interview that she did for “Brats,” she has a hard time believing him because he seemed so emotionally aloof when they worked together. McCarthy agrees.

After this New York magazine article was published, the so-called Brat Pack members tried to avoid working with each other as much as possible because they thought the Brat Pack name was a stigma for their careers. Moore and Estevez, who were an on-again/off-again couple in the mid-1980s, were the exceptions to Brat Pack members who avoided working together during the Brat Pack heyday. Estevez and Moore were briefly engaged to each other, but their relationship ended around the same time that their 1986 co-starring movie “Wisdom” (which was written and directed by Estevez) was a huge flop. “Wisdom” and the failed romance of Estevez and Moore are not mentioned at all in “Brats.”

Molly Ringwald—who starred in a string of teen-oriented hit movies written by filmmaker John Hughes, such as 1984’s “Sixteen Candles,” 1985’s “The Breakfast Club” and 1986’s “Pretty in Pink”—was also considered to be part of the Brat Pack, even though she was never really a close friend with the other members, who were all in their 20s in the mid-1980s, while she was still a teenager. Ringwald declined to participate in the “Brats” documentary, according to McCarthy, who co-starred with Ringwald in “Pretty in Pink” and 1988’s “Fresh Horses.” Someone who is not mentioned at all in “Brats” but who is often considered part of the Brat Pack is Anthony Michael Hall, who was a teenager when he co-starred in “Sixteen Candles,” “The Breakfast Club” and Hughes’ 1985 comedy “Weird Science.” In 2009, Hughes died of a heart attack at the age of 59.

Nelson was elusive and the former Brat Packer who was the most difficult to contact for the “Brats” documentary, according to McCarthy, although the ending of “Brats” hints that Nelson eventually made contact with McCarthy by phone. Nelson is not interviewed in the movie, so it can be presumed he also declined to participate. Nelson’s absence from the “Brats” documentary isn’t a surprise. For decades, Nelson has generally shunned his association with the Brat Pack, except for when he does the occasional “Breakfast Club” reunion interview.

McCarthy does voiceover narration and interviewing for this documentary (his feature-film directorial debut), where he somewhat pretentiously wants to make to clear that he’s always been a serious actor from New York City. McCarthy drops quotes from playwrights Tennessee Willams and Eugene O’Neill, as if to prove he is well-versed in the work of theater artists. The Brat Pack actors and actresses interviewed for “Brats” are Estevez, Lowe, Moore and Sheedy, with McCarthy usually doing the interviews at the interviewees’ respective homes.

In “Brats,” McCarthy also debunks any false perceptions that the Brat Packers are close friends all these years later. And as if to prove a point about how much distance McCarthy put between himself and the other members of the Brat Pack, McCarthy mentions multiple times in “Brats” that he had not seen Estevez, Moore and Lowe in person for at least 30 years until he met up with them for this documentary. (Most of the interviews for the documentary were conducted in 2022.)

In the case of Estevez, McCarthy says he hadn’t seen Estevez since the “St. Elmo’s Fire” premiere in Los Angeles. McCarthy also says in the documentary (as he has in his 2021 memoir “Brat: An ’80s Story”) that he and Lowe were very competitive with each other at the height of their Brat Pack fame. In the “Brats” documentary, former rivals Lowe and McCarthy joke about how Lowe constantly meets Brat Pack fans who tell him they prefer McCarthy, while McCarthy constanly meets Brat Pack fans who tell him that they prefer Lowe.

Not surprisingly, Lowe and Moore (the two former Brat Packers with the most successful acting careers who are in this documentary) seem to be most at ease with the Brat Pack label. Estevez is still visibly uncomfortable with the Brat Pack label. Sheedy and McCarthy seem to have mixed feelings but have made as much peace as possible with this Brat Pack label.

Lowe expresses the most appreciation for how the Brat Pack movies changed some people’s lives and influenced the industry. Lowe and McCarthy both agree that it’s beautiful when fans express how much the Brat Pack movies changed their lives. Lowe puts a very positive spin on everything by saying that although the New York magazine article was “mean-spirited” and “an attempt to minimize our talents,” the benefits of Brat Pack fame outweighed any down sides.

Moore uses a lot of therapy lingo in discussing how she processed her Brat Pack fame. She says of the Brat pack label: “It didn’t really represent us.” However, Moore says pushing back against the Brat Pack label was “againstness” that just fed into any negativity and backlash that the Brat Packers got.

Estevez, who says he often turns down invitations to talk about his past at length, tells McCarthy in “Brats” why he agreed to do this documentary interview: “It was time we clear the air on a couple of things.” Estevez agrees with McCarthy’s assessment that the Brat Packers consciously avoided co-starring together in another large ensemble movie like “St. Elmo’s Fire” because of the Brat Pack label. “We would’ve been kryptonite to each other,” Estevez comments.

As for the Brat Pack media frenzy, Estevez states: “Was it something we benefited from? Maybe. But in the long run, we did not.” What’s missing from Estevez’s commentary is any acknowledgement that being the son of a famous actor certainly gave him advantages in the entertainment industry that he benefited from, long before the Brat Pack label existed. It seems a bit tone-deaf for Estevez to blame an unflattering magazine article for perhaps not getting some career opportunities when he already had more advantages and more opportunities than most actors will ever have.

Sheedy, one of the co-stars of “The Breakfast Club” (a comedy/drama about a group of high school students who spend a Saturday in detention), says that “The Breakfast Club” is the “gift that keeps on giving” because it’s the movie that she’s done that seems to have had the biggest impact on people. In “The Breakfast Club,” Sheedy had the role of Allison Reynolds, the “weird” misfit loner of the group. In real life, Sheedy says she related to Allison a lot because Sheedy describes herself as being a quiet misfit when she was in high school.

McCarthy says that he and other people with the Brat Pack label had their careers “branded, without any wiggle room.” McCarthy adds, “It was such a stigma, early on. Nobody wanted to be associated with it.” He later says to Sheedy about being a member of the so-called Brat Pack: “We were members of a club we never asked to join.”

The main “what if” question presented in “Brats” is: “What if the Brat Pack description had never been applied to this group?” On the one hand, McCarthy says that for years, he felt resentment over not getting the types of prestigious movie roles where he would get to work with A-list directors. On the other hand (a point that McCarthy says he has now more appreciation for in hindsight), the Brat Pack fame helped him to continue to work steadily for years as a well-paid actor, which is something that most actors never experience. And, by his own admission, McCarthy says his entree into the movie business was relatively quick and easy, compared to what most other actors experience.

What’s left unsaid but can be discerned from the conversations that McCarthy has with his interviewees is this indisputable truth: Being in a constant state of “career envy” is not a healthy place to be for anyone. Even if the people who were labeled as Brat Packers never had the Brat Pack label thrust upon them, they probably wouldn’t have had the types of careers that they saw some of their actor peers achieving. The reality is that people who call themselves actors rarely get to be a superstar like Tom Cruise or an Oscar winner like Sean Penn. (Cruise and Penn were listed as members of the Brat Pack in Blum’s 1985 article.) And just like in any profession, many people have highs and lows in their careers and can never go back to the highest of highs that they achieved.

Most people who’ve heard of the Brat Pack don’t know that Blum’s 1985 “Brat Pack” article also listed Nicolas Cage as a member of the Brat Pack. Cage, who is a member of the famous Coppola filmmaking family, was described in the article as the “ethnic” Brat Packer because of Cage’s Italian American heritage. Cage would go on win to an Oscar for Best Actor (for the 1995 alcoholism drama “Leaving Las Vegas”) and has had a career with its share of ups and downs. However, Cage’s career was certainly not defined or branded by what Blum wrote in that “Brat Pack” article. The “Brats” documentary does not mention Cage at all because Cage is proof of someone who was able to transcend the Brat Pack label.

Lauren Shuler Donner, a longtime successful film producer whose credits include “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “Pretty and Pink,” is interviewed in “Brats” and has the best attitude of all the “Brats” interviewees about the Brat Pack label. She tells McCarthy what she thought of the Brat Pack label and everyone associated with the Brat Pack: “It distinguished us. I thought it was fabulous. I thought, ‘Aren’t these guys lucky? Aren’t these guys talented?'”

Also interviewed are three “Brat Pack adjacent” actors: Jon Cryer, a co-star of “Pretty in Pink”; Timothy Hutton, who won a best supporting actor Oscar for 1980’s “Ordinary People”; and Lea Thompson, who is best known for her role in 1985’s “Back to the Future.” Hutton, who is interviewed at his farm in New York state, doesn’t have much that’s interesting to say in this documentary. (It should be noted that Hutton was also mentioned as a Brat Packer in Blum’s article, but Hutton’s career had already started to decline by 1985.) In “Brats,” Cryer mostly reminisces with McCarthy about filming “Pretty in Pink,” which famously had its original ending drastically changed after audiences at test screenings expressed extreme dislike for the original ending. Thompson’s comments are mostly about the Brat Pack movies’ influences on young people.

Pop culture journalists (including Blum) and filmmakers also weigh in with their thoughts on the Brat Pack. They include “Pretty in Pink” director Howard Deutch, who is married to Thompson; author Bret Easton Ellis (“Less Than Zero”); film critic Kate Erbland; screenwriter Michael Oates Palmer (“The West Wing”); pop culture critic Ira Madison III; journalist/author Malcolm Gladwell; talent manager Loree Rodkin; casting director Marci Liroff; and journalist Susannah Gora, author of “You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation.”

When McCarthy interviews Blum for this documentary, Blum also seems to have mixed feelings about what the term Brat Pack did to people’s careers, including his own. Blum expresses pride and no regrets over creating this Brat Pack description, which was a riff on the Rat Pack clique consisting of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Dean Martin and Joey Bishop. (In the “Brats” documentary, McCarthy and Lowe tell a quick and amusing story about how they met Liza Minnelli at the original Spago restaurant sometime in 1985, and she took them to Davis’ house to meet Davis, who served them drinks and complimented McCarthy and Lowe. It was a “Rat Pack meets Brat Pack” moment, says McCarthy.) However, Blum admits that he created the label Brat Pack with the hope that his career would advance too. Based on the results, Blum (ironically, just like McCarthy) doesn’t think it helped his career and might have pigeonholed him as his main claim to fame.

The “Brats” documentary has a brief mention of the Brat Pack’s lack of racial diversity being a sign of the times, when on-screen entertainment was much more racially segregated than it is now. However, Madison (who is African American) and Gladwell (who is a biracial British Canadian) both say that people of color are so accustomed to seeing white-oriented entertainment, the Brat Pack movies just represent this reality. (And the reality is that there are many white people who only have white friends, as seen in Brat Pack movies.) Regardless of race, the Brat Pack movies had character personalities that people of any race could relate to on a human level. The main cultural divides in Brat Pack movies had to do with social class and popularity, not race.

The “Brats” documentary tends to overstate how “pioneering” the Brat Pack was in the 1980s. The Brat Packers certainly were never the biggest teen idols of all time. And none of the Brat Pack movies came close to being 1980s blockbusters such as megahits “E.T: The Extraterrestrial,” “Back to the Future” or “Top Gun.” In fact, many of the Brat Pack movies had middling success at the box office or were outright bombs. The documentary doesn’t mention Brat Pack movie flops such as “Wisdom,” “Fresh Horses,” 1984’s “Oxford Blues” and 1986’s “Blue City.”

Lowe has the biggest ego of the former Brat Packers when he claims that entertainment launched in the 21st century—such as the youth-oriented CW network and teen-oriented TV shows like “Glee”—would not have existed without the Brat Pack. (None of the Brat Packers had anything to do with creating the CW or “Glee,” by the way.) Lowe admits that the Brat Pack wasn’t as big as the Beatles, but he speculates that at the height of the Brat Pack craze, it’s possible the Brat Pack could have sold out Shea Stadium in New York, like the Beatles did.

The “Brats” documentary gives proper context to the 1980s boom of movies centered on teenagers and people in their early 20s. But the documentary ignores that there was also a proliferation of youth-oriented movies in the 1950s and early 1960s. “Back to the Future” co-star Thompson correctly points out the main difference between the youth-oriented movies of the 1980s and those in previous decades was that these 1980s movies were the first to benefit from being released on home video within a year of their theatrical releases. The home video releases extended the influences of these movies and made it easier for Generation X (people who were in their teens and 20s in the 1980s and 1990s) and younger generations to discover these films and watch these movies repeatedly in ways that weren’t possible before the invention of home video.

“Brats” has the expected archival footage of film clips and interviews. The documentary includes a somewhat amusing archival clip from the after-party of the “Pretty in Pink” movie premiere in Los Angeles. In this archival clip, an uncomfortable-looking McCarthy and “Pretty in Pink” co-star James Spader are being interviewed for MTV by Fee Waybill, the lead singer of the Tubes, whose solo song “Saved My Life” was on the “Pretty in Pink” soundtrack.

It’s obvious from this interview that McCarthy’s discomfort with the Brat Pack label was part of a larger issue that McCarthy had with fame. In the “Brats” documentary, McCarthy says of how he felt at the “Pretty in Pink” premiere: “That night encapsulates my career: thrilled but terrified.” McCarthy adds that he also remembers getting very drunk that night.

“Brats” also mentions the importance of soundtrack music from certain Brat Pack movies. Hughes (who directed “Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club”) put a lot of his favorite artists on his movie soundtracks, which is why these soundtracks often had European artists who had their international breakthroughs and biggest hits because of being on these soundtracks. For example: Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” from “The Breakfast Club” soundtrack and OMD’s “If You Leave” from the “Pretty in Pink” soundtrack. The “St. Elmo’s Fire” soundtrack (which had North American and British artists) was notable for hits such as John Parr’s title track and David Foster’s instrumental “Love Theme From St. Elmo’s Fire.”

Although some of the former Brat Pack members (including McCarthy) do a little bit of whining about their fame and success, most of the “Brats” documentary is a thoughtful reflection of how self-images and careers were affected by other people’s perceptions of the Brat Pack. The movie purposefully avoids the former Brat Packers telling wild tales of 1980s excesses, although McCarthy does briefly allude to his alcoholism and recovery, which he went public about years ago. (Some former members of the Brat Pack—such as McCarthy, Lowe and Moore—have memoirs where they’ve shared some of their stories about substance abuse and decadence.) What will resonate most with viewers of “Brats” is the acknowledgement that emotional maturity and self-identity can be difficult journeys for many people, regardless if they are famous or not.

Hulu will premiere “Brats” on June 13, 2024.

Review: ‘Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge,’ starring Diane von Furstenberg

June 7, 2024

by Carla Hay

Diane von Furstenberg in “Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge” (Photo courtesy of Hulu/Disney)

“Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge”

Directed by Trish Dalton and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Some language in French with subtitles

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge” features a predominantly white group of people (with a few black people and Asians) from the fashion and entertainment industries discussing the life and career of fashion designer/mogul Diane von Furstenberg.

Culture Clash: Diane von Furstenberg battled against sexism and antisemitism and became one of the few female owners of a major fashion company in the 1970s, but her complicated personal life has had a lot of chaos and heartbreak.

Culture Audience: Besides appealing to the obvious target audience of Diane von Furstenberg fans, “Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching documentaries about the fashion industry, celebrities and feminists who conquered a male-dominated field.

Diane von Furstenberg, Talita von Furstenberg and Morgan Hill in “Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge” (Photo courtesy of Hulu/Disney)

“Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge” is a definitive visual biography about the trailblazing fashion designer/mogul Diane von Furstenberg, who is candid about her personal life and career. Her charisma and unconventionality make this very conventionally formatted documentary shine. Because she’s been open about many aspects of her life over the years (including her 2014 memoir “The Woman I Wanted to a Be”), there isn’t too much revealed about von Furstenberg in this movie that she hasn’t already revealed about herself. However, von Furstenberg’s hindsight gives the documentary a richer perspective of her life, as she is equally comfortable discussing her past and her present, while looking ahead to her future.

Directed by Trish Dalton and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, “Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge” had its world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Festival. “Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge” is also the name of an installation that went on display in New York City in June 2024. The installation could be considered an extension of the documentary and vice versa,

The documentary begins by showing a 1980s clip from an interview that von Furstenberg did with David Letterman. In the interview, he’s somewhat condescending, as he tries to make it sound like von Furstenberg was a “one-hit wonder,” whose claim to fame was inventing the wrap dress and being previously married to a prince (Egon von Furstenberg). The rest of the the documentary shows that Diane was far from a one-hit wonder but has actually been a master of reinvention and staying relevant in fickle industries. And even though she was married to a prince, her life has been far from being like a fairy tale.

Born to Jewish parents on December 31, 1946, in Brussels, Belgium, her birth name was Diane Simone Michele Halfin. Her mother Liliane, also known as Lily, is discussed a lot in the documentary as Diane’s biggest life mentor, but von Furstenberg barely mentions her father. As a child of Holocaust survivors (Lily survived the notorious Auschwitz death camp), von Furstenberg said the Holocaust wasn’t discussed in her family, but she learned from her mother what would become a lifelong motto about survival: “Fear is not an option.”

In the documentary, von Furstenberg (who is an only child) talks about how her mother was told by doctors that her child wouldn’t live. In a sense, von Furstenberg’s entire life snce birth has been about beating the odds and defying people’s expectations. She says in the documentary that her mother taught her to be fearless and independent. “She wanted to equip me, in case I needed to live the way that she lived.” And that meant growing up fast.

Here parents’ marriage fell apart when Lily left the family to be with another man. Diane, who was a teenager at the time, was sent to live in a boarding school. In the documentary, Diane doesn’t express any bitterness about this family turmoil and says that being sent to boarding school was probably the best thing that could have happened to her during this time. It was at boarding school where Diane (who describes herself as sexually fluid) says she fell in love for the first time with a man and with a woman and had affairs with both sexes.

A recurring theme in the documentary is that Diane is someone who doesn’t like restrictions placed on her, whether these restrictions are traditional gender roles, monogamy or whatever she wants to do with her life. She has gotten pushback and criticism from some people for how she has lived. However, even with her constant battle to retain these personal freedoms, she has a tendency to want to escape or be in denial when life gets too difficult for her, by her own admission.

In the documentary, Diane describes her first husband Egon (a German prince), whom she married in 1969, as a magnetic charmer who swept her off of her feet in a passionate love affair. At the time, it was considered somewhat scandalous for this German prince to marry a middle-class Jewish woman. Diane also describes the antisemitism of Egon’s father, who would refer to Diane’s and Egon’s two children—Alexander (born in 1970) and Tatiana (born in 1971)—as the “little Jews.” Diane says when she was pregnant with Alexander, also known as Alex, she told her unborn child, “We’ll show them.”

Alex and Tatiana are both interviewed in the documentary. They describe their mother as not beng very attentive when they were children, but she taught them to be more independent than most kids their age. Tatiana says that Diane’s style of parenting can ether be considered “neglectful” or “free.” Diane admits that she was a very non-traditional mother whose was busy running a business and having a very active social life where her children were not necessarily her biggest priority, even though her love for them always existed. Lily has the main child caretaker of Alex and Tatiana. Diane also shares painful memories about Lily having a mental breakdown.

In the early 1970s, Diane says she and Egon (who was also openly bisexual) were living in New York City and were fully immersed in a celebrity lifestyle of parties and swinging in their open marriage. Diane describes Egon as being more promiscuous than she was and the reason why they separated in 1972 eventually got divorced in 1983. Egon died of AIDS in 2004, at age 57. In the documentary, the family’s devastation over his death is discussed by Diane, Egon and Tatiana.

Alex says in the documentary that it wasn’t unusual to see famous people spend the night. Diane doesn’t name drop a lot about who her famous lovers were, but she mentions that she slept with Ryan O’Neal and Warren Beatty separately on the same weekend. And she says that Mick Jagger and David Bowie propositioned her to have a threesome with them, but she turned down this offer.

Diane says of the end of her first marriage: “Divorce, for me, was freedom … I became the woman I wanted to be … I was the woman in charge.” Her split from Egon also coincided with the rise of Diane as a designer and a business mogul in the fashion industry during a period of time when it was highly unusual for a woman to be either or both.

The documentary retells the well-known stories behind the wrap dress (which Diane invented in 1974) and Diane’s meteoric rise in the fashion industry with her self-titled fashion brand, also known as DVF. Diane says she initially got the inspiration for the wrap dress from wrap blouses that ballerinas would wear. When Diane saw Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia Nixon wear a DVF wrap blouse over a skirt during the 1973 Watergate scandal, Diane got the idea to make a wrap dress. It became worldwide sensation and was popular because it looked like high fashion but was affordable.

And for someone who considers herself a fiercely independent feminist, a few close friends (such as writer Fran Lebowitz) say in the documentary that there have been periods in Diane’s life when Diane transformed herself to be more compatible with whichever man she was in a serious relationship with at the time. When Diane was married to Egon, she was the jetset and glamorous princess wife that she was expected to be.

Later, her photographer friend Peter Arnell says that when Diane was having problems with her business and her love life in the 1980s, she escaped from her problems by doing a lot of traveling. Her love affair with Italian writer Alain Elkann resulted in Diane dressing differently, by changing her wardrobe from her signature bright prints to more toned-down and conservative clothes that university intellectuals tend to wear. In her current phase, she has been part of a power couple since her love affair with billionaire entertainment mogul Barry Diller, who is interviewed in the documentary and whom Diane describes as her “soul mate.” Diane and Diller (who also identifies as sexually fluid) eloped in 2001, after meeting in the mid-1970s and being in an on-again/off-again romance since the 1980s.

Even though Diane preaches having a fearless attitude, she also expresses some vulnerability when she says that she doesn’t like going back to Brussels. “I feel really sad in Brussels,” she says. “Every time I come back, I feel small again.” She is vague about how she overcame business difficulties. (The closure of DVF stores in 2020 is not mentioned at all in the documentary.) However, she gives credit to good timing that wrap dresses became popular again in the 2000s.

“Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge” has an eclectic mix of people interviewed. They include media mogul Oprah Winfrey, former U.S. first lady/politician Hillary Rodham Clinton, artist Anh Duong, model Karlie Kloss, Diane’s friend Olivier Gelbsman, former British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful, makeup artist Gigi Williams, former Interview editor Bob Colacello, fashion designer Christian Louboutin, former DV creative director Nathan Jenden, author Linda Bird Franke, New York Times fashion writer Vanessa Friedman, “Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge” installation curator Nicolas Lor, “Diane von Furstenberg: A Life Unwrapped” author Gioia Diliberto, Nobel Prize winner Nadia Murad, George Washington University international affairs professor Muqaddesa Yourish, spritual guru Deepak Chopra, TV host Seth Meyers, and Diane’s grandchildren Talita von Furstenberg, Tassilo von Furstenberg and Antonia Stenberg.

At an age when most people have retired, Diane says she has no intention of retiring anytime soon. In the documentary Close friends and family members describe her as having more energy than most people who are decades younger than Diane is. Unlike many people in the fashion/beauty industry, Diane also says she’s not afraid of being old.

There’s a scene early on in the movie where Diane climbs into a bathroom sink while she does her own makeup. She declares, “I do not understand why people do not embrace age. You shouldn’t say how old you are. You should say how long you have lived. If you take away wrinkles, you take away the map of your life. I don’t want to erase anything from life.”

in the documentary, Diane also says that her decision to sell her products on QVC, as of 1996, was one of the best business decisions she could’ve made—even though she got a lot of criticism for it by many people at the time who thought this QVC association would ruin the DVF brand. Nowadays, it’s not unusual for a designer with haute couture experience to partner with a low-priced retailer for business ventures. Diane’s ability to be relatable to the “1%” in high society and the rest of the “99%” of society has a lot to do with her longevity and popularity. “Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge” is a reflection of this wide appeal, since it’s a documentary that can be enjoyed for its celebration of the human spirit—regardless of how much or how little viewers care about fashion.

Hulu will premiere “Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge” on June 25, 2024.

Review: ‘MoviePass, MovieCrash,’ starring Stacy Spikes, Hamet Watt, Mitch Lowe, Chris Kelly, Nathan McAlone, Jason Guerrasio and Daniel Kaufman

June 2, 2024

by Carla Hay

Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt in “MoviePass, MovieCrash” (Photo courtesy of Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images/HBO)

“MoviePass, Movie Crash”

Directed by Muta’Ali

Culture Representation: The documentary film “MoviePass, MovieCrash” features a predominantly white group of people (with some black people) discussing the rise, the fall and the attempted comeback of MoviePass, a subscription service for movie tickets.

Culture Clash: MoviePass struggled for years to become a popular company, until a controversial management team took over and made radical business decisions that rapidly increased subscribers, but the company crashed and burned due to overspending and extreme financial losses.

Culture Audience: “MoviePass, MovieCrash” will appeal primarily to people who are moviegoers, entrepreneurs or business investors and are interested in watching documentaries about how greed and arrogance can ruin businesses.

Stacy Spikes and Ted Farnsworth in “MoviePass, MovieCrash” (Photo courtesy of MoviePass/HBO)

The documentary “MoviePass, MovieCrash” (directed by Muta’Ali, also known as Muta’Ali Muhammad) offers some interesting behind-the-scenes perspectives of the rise, fall and attempted comeback of MoviePass, the first popular subscription service for movie tickets in the United States. The film editing brings some comedic touches to a harsh business story. Because so much of what happened to MoviePass has been widely reported elsewhere, not much is surprising in this documentary, and there are glaring omissions.

For example, “MoviePass, MovieCrash” does not mention AMC Theatres’ subscription service AMC Stubs A-List, which launched in June 2018 as an extension of the already existing AMC Stubs rewards program. AMC Stubs A-List was one of the biggest factors in the downfall of MoviePass in 2018. And although “MoviePass, MovieCrash” gives some commentary on the apparent racism behind white executives sidelining and eventually ousting MoviePass co-founders Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt (who are both African American), there’s no mention of the obvious sexism at MoviePass. At the peak of MoviePass’ popularity, all of the company’s top executives and board of directors consisted of men. “MoviePass, MovieCrash” had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival.

“MoviePass, MovieCrash” tells the company’s story in mostly chronological order, featuring interviews with Spikes and many of the company’s former employees, investors and subscribers. Headquartered in New York City, MoviePass was founded in 2011 and didn’t become a profitable company until 2023. Before co-founding MoviePass, Spikes (who was born and raised in Houston) had experiences in the 1990s as a marketing executive at Miramax and as a product manager at Motown Records. In 1997, Spikes founded the Urbanworld Film Festival as a showcase for filmmakers of color. Watt’s previous experience was as an entrepreneur of various small businesses.

According to what Spikes says in the documentary, MoviePass was originally conceived as a subscription service version of the Urbanworld Film Festival. The idea for MoviePass morphed from not just being limited to one film festival but to being a nationwide service for movie ticketing at corporate-owned and independently owned movie theaters. These movie theaters would get a cut of the revenue from tickets purchased through MoviePass.

The MoviePass business model was that subscribers would pay a monthly fee to watch a certain number of movies per month at a wide selection of movie theaters. One of the original MoviePass subscription plans was $39.95 for 30 movies a month, with a limit of one movie per day. Tickets could be booked on a MoviePass app, and a MoviePass card that operated like a debit card would redeem the tickets at participating movie theaters.

However, it was difficult for this business model to be profitable, as long as numerous subscribers were frequent moviegoers and paying only a fraction of what they would pay for tickets without this MoviePass subscription. In other words, MoviePass was losing money from all the ticket discounts that MoviePass subscribers were getting from these subscriptions. MoviePass did not have any other source of sales revenue to offset these financial losses, and the company had to rely on investors to keep MoviePass in business.

From 2011 to 2016, Spikes was the CEO of MoviePass, while Watt was the board chairman who mostly dealt with finding investors. The company’s biggest problem during this time period was that the subscriber base stalled somewhere around 20,000 subscribers. Another big setback was that MoviePass temporarily lost a business deal with Movietickets.com (partially owned by AMC Theatres) in 2015, when Adam Aron replaced Gerry Lopez as CEO of AMC Theatres. Lopez is interviewed in the documentary, while Aron is not. Lopez says that MoviePass was beneficial to AMC Theatres in the early-to-mid-2010s.

One of the original major investors in MoviePass was Chris Kelly, a former Facebook executive who briefly dabbled in politics. (In 2010, Kelly lost the California district attorney’s Democratic primary to Kamala Harris.) As a major investor in MoviePass, Kelly also became a member of MoviePass’ board of directors. Because he invested so much money in MoviePass, Kelly was eventually given two seats on the board. Kelly, who is interviewed in the documentary, says that there came a point in time when he had no more money that he could invest in MoviePass, so he urged Spikes and Watt to find other big-money investors.

Mitch Lowe, a former executive for Redbox and Netflix, joined MoviePass in 2016 as CEO and as a board member. Spikes was made chief operating officer (COO) under this new management structure, while Watt began to be sidelined. In the documentary, Lowe openly admits that he didn’t think Watt was as valuable as Spikes to MoviePass at the time.

On the recommendation of Lowe, a big-talking executive named Ted Farnsworth (who was CEO of analytics firm Helios and Matheson at the time) was brought to MoviePass as a chief investor. Farnsworth had a background in finance, public relations and marketing with several start-up companies. Farnsworth told the MoviePass executives that MoviePass couldn’t be profitable until MoviePass had at least 1 million subscribers. Spikes says in the documentary that he constantly raised concerns to Lowe, Farnsworth and other MoviePass board members about the sustainability of this goal.

Spikes says Farnsworth and Lowe repeatedly dismissed Spikes’ warnings that MoviePass’ financial losses would become too large to handle with more than 1 million subscribers, unless MoviePass figured out a way for the company to become profitable. There was also the issue of MoviePass being understaffed and unable to keep up with any rapid increase in subscribers. Lowe’s reaction was to act like Spikes was being negative and difficult: “He was not being a constructive member of the team,” Lowe says in the documentary about Spikes.

In the documentary, Spikes uses an airplane analogy to explain MoviePass’ rapid growth plans: “We’re kind of learning to build the plane mid-flight. And changing it from a crop duster to a 747 that can handle large volumes of people. We were not prepared to keep running at that pace.” Spikes says his recommendation to “put the brakes” on MoviePass’ plan for rapid growth was often ignored.

Lowe wanted MoviePass to quickly reach the goal of 1 million subscribers and get a lot of media attention for it. Lowe takes full credit in the documentary for coming up with the idea of reducing the MoviePass subscription price to $9.95 per month, which would still give subscribers a “pass” to see one movie every day at participating theaters. And sure enough, MoviePass had a meteoric increase in subscribers and got a lot of media attention from late 2017 through all of 2018. By then, Spikes and Watt had been pushed out of the company.

In August 2017, Helios and Matheson bought a majority stake in MoviePass. Spikes and Watt were removed from MoviePass’ board of directors and forced out of the company. Spikes and Watt got to keep their stock shares in MoviePass after they were fired from the company. However, under the terms of their exit deal, Spikes and Watt could not buy or sell these shares for a 12-month period after being dismissed from MoviePass. According to Spikes, his shares in MoviePass were worth about $80 million when he was ousted from MoviePass in 2017. A year later, those shares would essentially be worthless.

MoviePass’ rapid rise and fall have been well-documented in the media and elsewhere. By December 2017, MoviePass had 1 million subscribers. By February 2018, MoviePass had 2 million subscribers. By June 2018, MoviePass had 3 million subscribers. Lowe and Farnsworth became the new faces of MoviePass, with many media outlets incorrectly identifying Lowe and Farnsworth as the founders of MoviePass. Lowe and Farnsworth soaked up all the publicity they were getting for being “visionary” leaders of a “hot” company that was a popular choice for stock investors.

Still, the question remained: How was MoviePass going to actually become profitable? In media interviews, Farnsworth and Lowe kept saying that MoviePass was planning to sell its customer data to movie studios. However, they avoided answering questions on how much this data was actually worth to make up for the hundreds of millions of dollars that MoviePass was losing.

Meanwhile, MoviePass went on a spending spree. The company spent millions on promoting MoviePass at major film festivals and other events. According to the documentary, MoviePass reportedly spent $1 million at the 2018 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and hired mismatched spokespeople—such as former basketball star Dennis Rodman and social media influencer OK Bunny—to promote MoviePass at the festival. OK Bunny is interviewed in the documentary, and she still seems a little confused by what MoviePass was doing at Coachella and why she was paired with Rodman.

There were other ill-conceived business decisions, such as MoviePass Ventures and production company MoviePass Films, which invested heavily in the 2018 flop biopic “Gotti,” starring John Travolta as notorious Mafia boss John Gotti. Lowe says that MoviePass thought that its subscriber base would be the most likely to buy tickets to any movies that MoviePass produced. The failure of “Gotti” proved that business theory wrong. MoviePass also purchased the outdated Moviefone, a financially declining company for movie tickets and showtimes.

There were helicopters and private jets bearing the MoviePass logo. And several people in the documentary say that Lowe and especially Farnsworth were caught up in acting like “rock star” executives who wanted to party with celebrities. Lowe doesn’t deny any of it and makes this excuse for why he and other high-ranking MoviePass executives got the biggest perks from the spending sprees, while the lower-level employees were overworked and understaffed: “Not all roles get to party.”

Farnsworth is not interviewed in “MoviePass, MovieCrash,” which depicts Farnsworth as the story’s biggest villain and a prime example of callous corporate greed. There is no mention in the documentary if the “MoviePass, Movie Crash” filmmakers attempted to interview him, or if Farnsworth declined any requests for comment. It’s mentioned in the documentary that Farnsworth abused his power at MoviePass to make nepotism hires of family members and friends who were inexperienced or unqualified.

One of these nepotism hires was Robert “Bob” Ellis (Diana Ross’ first ex-husband), who is mentioned but not interviewed in the documentary. Ellis, who was put on MoviePass’ payroll as a marketing consultant, is described as a Hollywood hanger-on, photographer and close friend of Farnsworth. He was part of the MoviePass executive clique that went on luxury trips that were paid for by the company.

Also mentioned but not interviewed in the documentary is Khalid Itum, an inexperienced MoviePass employee who quickly rose through the company ranks and eventually became MoviePass’ vice president of business development. Itum is named as one of the biggest offenders in the wild spending sprees at MoviePass. The documentary includes some audio clips of recordings of MoviePass staff meetings. In these recordings, Itum and Lowe seem to be willfully in denial about how their overspending was very damaging to MoviePass.

In July 2018, during the weekend that “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” was released in theaters, MoviePass crashed and burned when the MoviePass app stopped working or had limitations for most of its customers. MoviePass frequently switched its terms of service without giving customers proper notice. Subscribers complained of not getting responses from MoviePass customer service representatives. These problems continued for the next several months. The widespread customer complaints and several lawsuits against MoviePass led to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigating MoviePass for fraud.

Daniel Kaufman, the former FTC director who was involved in these MoviePass investigations, describes Farnsworth as a con man who didn’t really know how to operate a business but only knew how to promote a business. Journalists/reporters Nathan McAlone and Jason Guerrasio, who both covered the MoviePass saga for the website Business Insider, also describe Farnsworth as the worse person in the toxic duo of Farnsworth and Lowe. Business Insider is listed in the documentary’s end credits as a production collaborator for “MoviePass, MovieCrash.”

As for Lowe, he doesn’t take much personal responsibility for MoviePass’ downfall. Lowe shifts almost all of the blame on bad advice that he got from Farnsworth. In the documentary, Lowe says that when things came crashing down for MoviePass, Farnsworth told Lowe: “Just keep going and the money will come.” MoviePass’ bankruptcy and closure in 2019, as well as MoviePass’ revival by Spikes (who bought back the rights to MoviePass in 2021 and returned to the company as CEO), are briefly mentioned toward the end of the documentary. The MoviePass legal problems of Lowe, Farnsworth and Itum are in the documentary’s epilogue.

“MoviePass, MovieCrash” has interviews with former MoviePass customer service employees Sydney Weinshel, Emmanuel Freeman and Ezekiel Sansing; former MoviePass engineer Oscar Miscar; former MoviePass social media manager Drew Taylor; former Helios and Matheson public relations executive Mark Havener; former Urbanworld Film Festival director Gabrielle Glore; and former MoviePass subscribers Mat Levy, Jose Rolden and James Simermeyer. Also interviewed are several investors (some of whom were MoviePass investors, while some were not), such as Mark Gomes, John Fitchthorn, Ken Gardner, Ben Rabizadeh, Daymond John and Guy Primus.

The former MoviePass employees describe feeling optimistic and excited when they first joined the company, but that excitement soon turned to dread and discontent when they saw how things were being grossly mismanaged. Lower-lever staffers were overwhelmed with customer complaints, while MoviePass’ upper-level executives were living lavish lifestyles and denying that big problems existed at MoviePass. Miscar is the former MoviePass employee who is the most candid in the documentary interviews and is the only former MoviePass employee to call out the problematic racial issues in how Spikes and Watt were pushed out of MoviePass by an all-white team of executives.

Spikes and Watt are diplomatic when talking about their humiliating exits from MoviePass. Watt emphatically states that MoviePass is in his past, and he’s happy to have moved on to other things. (He’s an investor consultant.) By contrast, Spikes is still very clearly haunted by the demise of MoviePass from 2018 to 2019, and he is determined to make the company even bigger and better than it ever was. Spikes mentions he was partially inspired to revive MoviePass by how Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs and Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell were ousted from the companies they founded and made big comebacks when they returned to those companies.

“MoviePass, Movie Crash” uses a lot of clips from movies and TV shows as ways to put an emphasis on the emotions and reactions being described in the documentary. This editing brings some amusing entertainment to an otherwise infuriating story about corporate corruption. Spikes mentions that if he and Watt had been running MoviePass in the same the way that Lowe and Farnsworth ran the company into the ground, then Spikes and Watt would’ve gotten quicker and harsher legal consequences.

There is some mention in the documentary about these racial inequalities for entrepreneurs, with the obvious fact that white men get the vast majority of investment money. Watt says in the documentary that a start-up company such as MoviePass needed this factor to take the company to the next level: “If you have a white man with more gray hair that could inspire other white males with white hair to be more comfortable investing. It’s a factor we considered through the entire entrepreneurial journey.”

Lowe and Farnsworth certainly took MoviePass to the “next level,” but at what cost? The MoviePass brand name and reputation became permanently tarnished. Millions of dollars were lost. Untold numbers of people felt ripped off and cheated by MoviePass. And certain people got into big legal trouble over how MoviePass was mishandled.

The racial implications of MoviePass’ history are certainly acknowledged in the documentary. However, there’s no good reason for the noticeably low number of women interviewed for this documentary. Studies from the Motion Picture Association and other sources have shown for years that women are about 51% of the movie ticket buyers in the United States, and females are about 51% of moviegoers. And yet, there are no female MoviePass subscribers interviewed in this documentary. (A social media clip of a random female former MoviePass subscriber talking about MoviePass is not the same thing as an interview.)

The very real problem of sexism is completely ignored in “MoviePass, MovieCrash,” which comes across as very much like a “boys’ club” documentary without including the realities of how women have a big impact on movie ticket buying. The “MoviePass, MovieCrash” filmmakers also never question why women were excluded from being MoviePass’ highest-ranking leaders. The documentary’s biggest flaw is failing to mention these issues regarding gender and sexism. However, “MoviePass, MovieCrash” does a sufficient job of answering this question for anyone who is curious: “Whatever happened to MoviePass?”

HBO premiered “MoviePass, MovieCrash” on May 29, 2024.

Review: ‘The Beach Boys,’ starring Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and David Marks

May 26, 2024

by Carla Hay

A 1964 photo of the Beach Boys in “The Beach Boys.” Pictured from left to right: Dennis Wilson, Al Jardine, Carl Wilson, Brian Wilson and Mike Love. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images/Disney+)

“The Beach Boys”

Directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny

Culture Representation: The documentary film “The Beach Boys” features a predominantly white group of people (with two black people) from the music industry discussing the career and legacy of the Beach Boys, the California-based pop/rock band that rose to prominence in the 1960s.

Culture Clash: The Beach Boys had various conflicts inside and outside the band on the band’s musical direction, touring, business decisions, mental health, substance addiction and power struggles.

Culture Audience: Besides appealing to the obvious target audience of Beach Boys fans, “The Beach Boys” will appeal primarily to people who like watching celebrity biographies that have a lot of great archival footage but follow a familiar formula.

A 1966 photo from “The Beach Boys” of Beach Boys chief songwriter/producer Brian Wilson recording the album “Pet Sounds” in Los Angeles. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images/Disney+)

Ardent fans of the band will learn nothing new from “The Beach Boys” documentary, which plays it safe but is a very good introduction for viewers who don’t know much about the Beach Boys. The movie’s ending scene indicates a better story could’ve been told. That’s because at the end of the movie, there’s a very short scene of a band reunion with five surviving Beach Boys members (past and present) gathering to talk on the beach at Paradise Cove in Malibu, California, where the Beach Boys did the photo shoot for their 1962 debut album “Surfin’ Safari.”

“The Beach Boys” documentary purposely doesn’t show what was said during this reunion and only shows some of the men smiling and embracing each other before they sit down at a table on the beach. It’s an example of how the documentary is certainly competent when it comes to giving a history of the Beach Boys, but the documentary would have been more impactful if it had anything new that was truly exclusive and compelling. Showing this type of heavily edited reunion clip at the very end of the movie just seems like a tease that will give viewers the impression that the documentary left out some of the best parts of the Beach Boys’ story.

Directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny, “The Beach Boys” is one of several biographical movies or TV series about the Beach Boys. This documentary can be considered a quasi-update of director Alan Boyd’s 1998 documentary film “Endless Harmony: The Beach Boys Story,” which did not have the participation of the surviving band members. Some other Beach Boys on-screen biographies are the 1990 TV-movie drama “Summer Dreams: The Story of the Beach Boys” and the 2000 drama mini-series “The Beach Boys: An American Family.”

Curiously, “The Beach Boys” 2024 documentary has very little details about the band members’ lives after the early 1980s. For example, the band’s 1988 massive comeback hit “Kokomo” is not discussed and only played during the movie’s end credits. However, because “The Beach Boys” documentary has the benefit of the participation of the band members who were alive at the time this documentary was filmed, it makes this documentary slightly better than most movies about the Beach Boys.

“The Beach Boys” documentary dutifully covers the origins of the band, which was formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. The original and best-known lineup of the band consisted of brothers Brian Wilson (the eldest brother), who was the band’s chief songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, playing bass guitar or keyboards on stage; Dennis Wilson (the middle brother), who was the band’s drummer; Carl Wilson (the youngest brother), who was the band’s lead guitarist; Mike Love, the Wilson brothers’ first cousin and lead singer of the band; and rhythm guitarist Al Jardine, a longtime family friend.

The Wilson brothers’ parents—Murry Wilson and Audree Wilson—encouraged and supported the band. Murry became the first manager of the Beach Boys. By all accounts, Murry was tough, bullying and abusive. (Murry’s physical and emotional abuse of his sons is briefly mentioned in archival interview footage with Carl and Dennis.) However, people who talk about Murry in the documentary also agree that the Beach Boys probably wouldn’t have achieved the level of success that they had if not for Murry. Eventually, a major problem for the band was Murry’s constant interference in how he wanted the band’s music to sound.

The Beach Boys had an image of being a carefree California pop/rock band with distinctive harmonies. The Beach Boys experienced almost immediate success with their first single “Surfin’,” which became a hit on a Los Angeles radio station, which led to bigger opportunities for the band. Many of the Beach Boys’ biggest hits were about surfing (“Surfin’,” “Surfer Girl,” “Surfin’ USA”) or about the California lifestyle. The band’s earliest musical influences included the Four Freshmen and surf music artists such as Dick Dale.

Even though the Beach Boys were initially rejected by every major record company, they eventually signed with Capitol Records, with Nick Venet as the band’s A&R (artists and repertoire) executive from Capitol. Venet started off producing the early Beach Boys records until Brian Wilson took over as the chief producer during the height of the group’s success. Murry acted like he wanted to be a producer for the band too, and that led to inevitable major conflicts.

Each member of the band had a certain role that was part of the Beach Boys image. Brian Wilson was the “musical genius” who didn’t like to tour. Love was the extroverted lead singer who was band’s jokester with a huge ego. Dennis Wilson (the only member of the Beach Boys who was an enthusiastic surfer) was the rebellious heartthrob. Carl Wilson was the “shy and quiet one.” Jardine was the “regular guy” who was often the peacemaker.

“The Beach Boys” documentary has the expected archival footage and use of the band’s original songs. Most of the band’s biggest hits from the 1960s are included, such as the aforementioned “Surf” songs, “Help Me, Rhonda,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “California Girls,” “I Get Around,” “Good Vibrations,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “Sloop John B.” The documentary’s best archival footage (audio and video) is of the recording sessions, particularly when it shows how these recordings took shape.

During the heyday of the Beach Boys’ 1960s commercial success, they were heavily influenced by the music created by music producer Phil Spector (who was famous for his Wall of Sound) and the Beatles. The Beatles’ 1965 “Rubber Soul” album influenced the Beach Boys’ 1966 album “Pet Sounds,” which in turn influenced the Beatles’ 1967 album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” The rivalries and the influences that the Beach Boys and the Beatles had on each other are detailed in the documentary, but there is no new information revealed.

The documentary and band members give a lot of credit to the Wrecking Crew, the influential group of studio musicians who played on a lot of iconic music of the 1960s and 1970s. Don Randi of the Wrecking Crew is interviewed for this documentary, which also has archival interview clips from Wrecking Crew members Carol Kaye and Glen Campbell, who was briefly a member of the Beach Boys. Other collaborators, such as lyricist Van Dyke Parks (who worked on the Beach Boys’ previously unreleased “Smile” album from the late 1960s), are seen in archival clips.

The Beach Boys had various lineup changes over the years. Brian Wilson and Jardine quit and rejoined the band multiple times for various reasons. One of the people who is interviewed in the documentary is David Marks, a neighbor friend of the Wilson brothers, who replaced Jardine in the band for a few years after Jardine quit the band for the first time in 1961.

There have been several reasons cited for why Jardine quit the Beach Boys for the first time, with the reasons ranging from creative differences to apathy to wanting to finish his college education. In the “Beach Boys” documentary Jardine says he quit the band in the early 1960s because he wanted to finish his college education. Jardine rejoined the band in 1963, replacing Marks, who quit after getting into a big dispute with Murry Wilson.

In 1965, guitarist Bruce Johnston joined the Beach Boys as a replacement for Campbell, who went on to have a successful career as a solo artist. Johnston takes some issue with the widespread public perception of Brian Wilson being the most important member of the Beach Boys. In the documentary, Johnston says, “Brian was lucky to have our voices to sing his dreams.” Out of all of the surviving Beach Boys members who participated in this documentary, Brian is the one who has the least to say in new interview footage. Most of the documentary’s comments from Brian are from archival interviews from other sources.

South African musicians Blondie Chaplin (who is interviewed in the documentary) and Ricky Fataar joined the Beach Boys in the band’s more experimental early 1970s era. Chaplin doesn’t say much in the documentary except that the Beach Boys’ music had a harder-edged sound when he was in the band, and the band situation “wasn’t that great” during this period of time. The documentary mentions the Beach Boys’ declining popularity in the first half of the 1970s got a significant boost with the release of the 1974 greatest hits compilation album “Endless Summer,” which was a big hit and made the Beach Boys a touring powerhouse that could sell out arenas again but also cemented their fate as a nostalgia act.

“The Beach Boys” is not a documentary where people should expect to hear much about the Beach Boys’ personal lives. The only current or former spouse of a Beach Boy who is interviewed in the documentary is Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford, who was Brian Wilson’s first wife and who was the president of Brother Records, the Beach Boys’ record label. The children of Beach Boys members are not interviewed.

Wilson-Rutherford tells the same stories she’s told in many interviews and books about the ups and downs that she witnessed or experienced as a member of the Beach Boys’ inner circle. Brian Wilson’s health problems (mental and physical), including substance addiction and depression, are also rehashed in the documentary, as they have been in many other biographies. This documentary provides no new insight on these issues. The only people who will be surprised by the information in this documentary are people who don’t know much about the Beach Boys.

One of the biggest flaws in the documentary is how it sidelines the deaths of Dennis Wilson and Carl Wilson. In 1983, Dennis drowned while intoxicated in Marina del Rey, California, when he was 39. Carl died of lung cancer in 1998, when he was 51. The deaths of Dennis and Carl are not even mentioned in “The Beach Boys” documentary until the very end, when a caption is briefly flashed on screen with their names and the years of their births and deaths.

In other words, don’t expect anyone in this documentary to comment on how these deaths affected them. For a movie about a “family band” (a term Love uses more than once), it’s a glaring omission not to discuss the deaths of two of the family members in the band. The documentary also never mentions that at the time that Dennis died, he was homeless and had nearly been fired from the band because of his alcoholism. The other band members ordered Dennis to go to rehab, but he left rehab after a few days and then died. None of that information is in the documentary.

“The Beach Boys” documentary features interviews with some well-known music artists—Lindsey Buckingham, Janelle Monáe, Ryan Tedder and Don Was—but their comments really just amount to fan gushing and offer nothing new to say. Josh Kun, a former music critic and currently University of Southern California’s vice provost of the arts, gives the obligatory academic/historian perspective. One person who is noticeably absent from the documentary is actor John Stamos, who has been a close friend (and occasional touring musician) of the Beach Boys, beginning in the 1980s.

As for Beach Boys scandals, there’s a brief mention of Dennis Wilson introducing an aspiring musician named Charles Manson to the Beach Boys’ inner circle in the late 1960s. (The documentary doesn’t mention that Dennis let Manson and some of Manson’s cult members live at a house rented by Dennis, who moved out and eventually got the Manson people evicted by no longer paying the rent.) Lead singer Love says in the documentary that he only met Manson once, and that was enough for him not to get further involved. Still, Manson wrote a Beach Boys song called “Never Learn Not to Love,” which was the B-side of the Beach Boys’ 1969 remake single of “Bluebirds Over the Mountain.”

Music producer Terry Melcher, whom Johnston describes as Johnston’s best friend at the time, declined to work with Manson, which led to a terrible aftermath that doesn’t need to be described in this review. The Beach Boys’ brief but notorious association with Manson is obviously described as a mistake in judgment, with the band members having no idea what Manson and his cult would end up doing. It’s quickly mentioned that Dennis Wilson felt tremendously guilty over introducing Manson into the Beach Boys’ world.

“The Beach Boys” documentary has an even shorter mention of all the lawsuits and legal disputes that Love has had with the Beach Boys in the 1980s and beyond. The documentary does not mention the controversy over Brian Wilson’s therapist Eugene Landy, who had an on-again/off-again, guru-like relationship with Brian from 1975 to the early 1990s, resulting in several lawsuits that involved the Beach Boys. (Landy died in 2006.) Beach Boys singer Love will only say in the documentary what is already public knowledge about his own Beach Boys legal conflicts: Love has been fighting for a share of royalties for Love’s uncredited songwriting of Beach Boys songs.

The Beach Boys lead singer bitterly comments in the documentary that Murry Wilson’s 1969 decision to sell the Beach Boys’ publishing (without consulting any of the band members first) has damaged the family’s legacy. Love, who says that he and Brian Wilson don’t talk very much these days, gets teary-eyed and chokes up when he remarks that if he would say something to Brian, it would be “I love you. And nothing anybody can do can change that.”

That’s why it’s incredibly frustrating that this documentary doesn’t show what was said in the reunion of Love, Brian Wilson, Jardine, Johnston and Marks seen at the end of the movie. There could almost be an entire documentary about that conversation. “The Beach Boys” gets the job done on an acceptable level when retelling well-known facts and putting them in a nostalgic package. Ultimately, it has the glossy sheen of a celebrity biography where all the key people participated but still didn’t tell the whole story.

Disney+ premiered “The Beach Boys” on May 24, 2024, with a sneak preview at select U.S. IMAX cinemas on May 21, 2024.

Review: ‘The Blue Angels’ (2024), starring Brian Kesselring, Christopher Kapuschansky, Scott Goossens, Frank Zastoupil, Cary Rickoff, Julius Bratton, Monica Borza and Amanda Lee

May 14, 2024

by Carla Hay

A scene from “The Blue Angels” (Photo courtesy of Amazon Content Services)

“The Blue Angels” (2024)

Directed by Paul Crowder

Culture Representation: The documentary film “The Blue Angels” (filmed mostly in 2022) features a predominantly white group of U.S. military people (with a few African Americans, Asian and Latin people) talking about the Blue Angels, an elite group of military plane pilots who tour the country for entertainment shows for the public.

Culture Clash: Being a Blue Angels pilot involves grueling physical demands and sacrifices in the pilots’ personal lives.

Culture Audience: “The Blue Angels” will appeal primarily to people interested in military pilot documentaries that have stunning aerial visuals but viewers should not expect to get a “warts and all” inside look at the Blue Angels.

A scene from “The Blue Angels” with Brian Kesselring (center) in a meeting (Photo courtesy of Amazon Content Services)

“The Blue Angels” is more of a glossy promotional video than an insightful documentary. This movie excels in giving viewers entertaining aerial views of the Blue Angels in action. The personal profiles of the individual Blue Angels are nice but bland. This documentary is for people who watch “Top Gun” movies mainly for the action scenes in the air, not the drama on the ground. It doesn’t try to pretend to be a groundbreaking documentary, so in that sense, “The Blue Angels” is a movie that is exactly what it appears to be.

Directed by Paul Crowder, “The Blue Angels” (which was filmed mostly in 2022) might attract some viewers who know that J.J. Abrams and “Top Gun: Maverick” co-star Glen Powell are among the producers of the documentary. (Abrams and Powell are not in this documentary.) The movie’s concept is simple: Show what happens in the year of the life of the Blue Angels, a team of elite military pilots and supporting staffers who travel about 300 days a year to do entertainment shows for the public. There are about 165 Blue Angels in any given year.

Formed in 1946, the Blue Angels are famous for their specialty of doing high-flying airplane stunts in precise synchronicity. Most of the Blue Angels are in the U.S. Navy, but there are small numbers of U.S. Marines who are able to become Blue Angels. In addition to entertaining the public (at the Blue Angels’ Flight Demonstration Squadron shows), the Blue Angels are involved in charities and educational work, which includes Blue Angels members visiting schools and hospitals.

The Blue Angels who are the most prominently featured in the documentary are Brian Kesselring (flight leader, #1); Christopher Kapuschansky (right wingman, #2); Scott Goossens (left wingman, #3); Frank Zastoupil (slot pilot, #4), the only U.S. Marine for the 2022 Blue Angels flight pilots; Cary Rickoff (lead solo, #5); Julius Bratton (opposing solo, #6); Monica Borza (flight surgeon); Alexander P. Armitas (incoming flight leader); and Amanda Lee (incoming pilot). Also featured in this “Blue Angels” movie are Blue Angels retired veterans Greg Woolridge and Gil Rud.

The documentary doesn’t give viewers much insight into the lives of the individual Blue Angels who get the most screen time. “The Blue Angels” mostly shows them at work, such as some of the training classes, group meetings and while they are flying in the sky. Some of them talk about the excitement and the monotony of training; what inspired them to become a Blue Angel; and to the physical challenges of the job.

For example, a huge risk of being a Blue Angel (or any job that involves piloting an air vehicle at high altitudes in high-velocity speeds) is getting a rush of blood to the head that can cause unconsciousness. There is also the risk of miscalculating certain angles and turns, which could be deadly mistakes. There is a brief tribute to the Blue Angels who died on the job—particularly Jeff Kuss, who died in an accident in 2016 and who was a beloved colleague of many of the people featured in this documentary.

The last third of “The Blue Angels” offers glimpses into the selection process of who will be the pilots for the 2023 Blue Angels’ Flight Demonstration Squadron and who will be the flight leader replacing Kesselring, whose term as flight leader ended in 2022. Lee is shown becoming the first female pilot for the Blue Angels’ Flight Demonstration Squadron during this selection process. (In 1975, Rosemary Mariner of the U.S. Navy was the first woman to fly a U.S. military tactical jet.)

Although many of Lee’s colleagues congratulate Lee for being the first female pilot for the Blue Angels’ Flight Demonstration Squadron, there is absolutely no candid discussion of sexism as the reason why the Blue Angels took this long to let a female pilot join their Flight Demonstration Squadron. Those are unpleasant but realistic details that this documentary completely ignores. No one in the documentary comments on these obvious sexism issues, probably because the filmmakers didn’t ask about these issues.

Brian Kesselring (who grew up in North Dakota) has a few very wholesome scenes showing him at home with his wife Ashley Kesselring (who is a major in the U.S. Navy) and their kids. As a basketball player in high school, Brian Kesselring says he dreamed of becoming a Blue Angel, but he mistakenly thought he might be too tall for the job. Like the other Blue Angels in the documentary, Brian Kesselring has a pleasant personality and says generic things. He comments on what it means to be a Blue Angel: “You’re not just representing yourself. You’re representing a whole bunch of people.”

There is really nothing unflattering shown about these Blue Angels, which is why the documentary looks too much like a public relations tool. The flying sequences are the best part of the movie and are the main reasons to see this documentary. Sure, a few of these Blue Angels talk about their fears and insecurities about failing in this job or about being away from their loved ones for long periods of time. But if you believe everything in this documentary, these Blue Angels are unrealistically “squeaky clean” and everyone on the team is like a family that gets along with each other. It’s really too good to be true.

And just like the “Top Gun” movies, “The Blue Angels” documentary has a very good selection of soundtrack songs to go along with the high-voltage action. In “The Blue Angels,” standout soundtrack songs include Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You” and the Killers’ “All These Things That I’ve Done.” Viewers who watch “The Blue Angels” should expect only to get a very selective peek into the behind-the-scenes dynamics of this military operation. The movie’s real appeal is what the Blue Angels do best when they’re flying in the sky.

Amazon MGM Studios will release “The Blue Angels” in select U.S. cinemas (exclusively on IMAX screens) on May 17, 2024. Prime Video will premiere the movie on May 24, 2024.

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